The Mysterion Mythos: Damien's Inferno
by Jizena
Summary: Sequel to Cthulhu Fhtagn. Four years after the R'lyeh crisis, Hell starts to creep its way closer to Earth, using paths the human eye can't see. Kyle has become the target of a grudge-ridden group of activists, Hell wants Kenny back, and Cartman's having some real family issues. And worlds may indeed collide without the help of a Guardian Angel. See profile for next update!
1. Episode 1: Open Case

– – –

**Author's Note:**

Okay, here we go! :3 I've been working on this on and off since before we finished _Cthulhu Fhtagn,_ and I'm really excited to start posting this!

_Damien's Inferno_ is the sequel to _Cthulhu Fhtagn,_ but this first chapter will be a little bit of a recap/refresher to catch things up from where the first story left off. We're turning to Dante's_ Inferno_ (which is going to be called _The Book of the Inferno_ in this story for reasons that will eventually be revealed) for some help with this part of the story more than Lovecraft works, but there's still going to be some Lovecraft influence coming in later chapters.

This story sticks to the same four narrators: Kenny, Kyle, Stan, and Butters. I'm doing the one narrator a week thing for a little while, but we'll see how long that keeps up, haha... _Damien's Inferno_ is going to have more focus on other League members, too, though (Kenny is still the main one, but the other guys are more tied into the Mythos than they realize...), and I'm planning to add in at least one other narrator in the later chapters...

I've rated this M for language and basic action-y violence. Some pairings do come into play, picking up from pretty much the same ones in Cthulhu Fhtagn, and while they're prevalent, the romance is going to be ending up secondary/tertiary to the action.

Thank you so much to everyone who has read, favorited and reviewed _Cthulhu Fhtagn!_ We hope you like this story too~ :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –

_**The Mysterion Mythos: **_

_**Damien's Inferno**_

"_I am the Way into the City of Woe._

_I am the Way to a Forsaken People._

_I am the Way into Eternal Sorrow._

_Sacred Justice moved my Architect._

_I was raised here by Divine Omnipotence._

_Primordial Love and Ultimate Intellect._

_Only those elements Time cannot wear_

_Were made before me, and beyond Time I stand._

_ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE."_

—The _Book of the Inferno_

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kyle_

It's kind of amazing to think about, really, that even though throughout human history we've been given plenty of examples of reasons why a bargain with the devil is never a good thing… human history goes right on repeating itself, and someone will inevitably go right on and decide to make another deal. Some people never learn.

And some curses never die.

– – –

Let me just start off by saying that I am pretty damn proud of everything that I am.

Now, okay, this isn't going to turn into some personal manifesto, or big life-affirming soliloquy or anything (I promise); it's not going to be me railing off on how, despite my faults, I'm human and here's what's awesome about me. I actually really hate stuff like that. Things just _are._ I'm too over-analytically logical to want to laud the little things about myself with exhausted and unnecessary poetics. That's what my literature class last semester was for.

Nope, right here, I'm just gonna lay it out flat:

I'm a psychic. I have telekinesis.

It's something that's taken me a while to accept about myself, but I was born with a quirk. When I was nine, I fell off a roof and it jostled something in my brain, and when I was sixteen, that quirk helped me save the world. Again, I'm still not bragging, I'm just stating facts. It happened. Just ask Clyde Donovan or Bebe Stevens to pull out a newspaper clipping from that year, or ask my younger brother Ike to search one of his four computer databases, or, hell, just ask my roommate, Kenny McCormick (who still at times brings up his luck for making it out of that alive), or his sister Karen. Ask my boyfriend, Stan Marsh—and God bless him for helping me through that troubled time, let me tell you.

It happened.

Sure, my real name isn't exactly attached to it… none of our real names are. Not in the way that we were truly involved. You might find a paper saying that Token Black's father stepped in as the mayor of South Park for a while… you might actually read a (quite well-written, I have to say) _Gazette _article on the fiasco by Wendy Testaburger herself. But you won't see anything stating that we few went to a place no mortal eyes were ever meant to see, fought and nearly lost our lives, and saved countless people from death or insanity. Some were lost, but so many were saved.

Through all of that, I had been developing that quirk. It went from being this annoying synapse in my brain that, whenever I got angry, would make lights flicker or china rattle. Little things that, for the longest time, I could pretend weren't caused by my own neurons. As it developed, though, I became able to move objects at will, stop things in midair, break equipment apart or bend things in half with my mind.

And then, I didn't need it anymore. So it disappeared.

For four pretty calmingly standard years, I just had to be other things. A good student, a good boyfriend; friend, son, brother—just a good person in general. That's what I aim for. Just because I _happen_ to have telekinesis does not mean I'm going to pull it out as a fucking party trick or let myself get butchered and cast onstage by some dumb carnival side show.

Even though they tried.

They had a way of turning strength into weakness.

It wasn't even originally because of the telekinesis that they wanted me; no, they tried to sign me up for other reasons. And by _they,_ I mean the GSM. Or, more accurately, their leaders.

We all had a hell of a time this past summer. And by we, I mean the vigilante league I've taken part in since I was nine years old. The Shadow League. When we were kids, it was kind of a game… but our little 'Coon and Friends' group had grown into that League that the town still talks about and looks to for help, and every one of us takes pride in the work that we do. Rallied under Kenny's alter ego, Mysterion, we—in growing number—did our part to stop the Dark Lord Cthulhu from plunging the planet into madness and darkness. We'd been seasoned into pros by the time we were all eighteen.

But still… Hell's a pretty scary thing, no matter how much time goes by. And really, as terrifying as things had been in R'lyeh, as many near-death experiences as some of us had faced back in elementary and high school, we couldn't exactly say we'd gone through hell until the summer Hell itself finally crept its merry way into South Park.

Confused?

I'll backtrack. That would make more sense anyway.

– – –

Here are a couple other indisputable facts about me: I'm five-foot-ten. I'm Jewish. I'm from South Park, Colorado, my name is Kyle Broflovski, my brother is from Canada, I think that women are very aesthetically (and sexually) pleasing but am proud to say I fell in love with a guy, I'm _very much_ a Gemini, and I am not very fond of the taste, smell, or texture of bananas.

Also, I have red hair.

_For some reason,_ that was the kicker at the start of summer. I was about to turn twenty-one, and had just finished up my third year of college, along with a few great, long-time friends. A handful of us had ended up at CSU in Fort Collins. Me, Stan, Kenny, Clyde, Red, Bebe, Butters, Craig… probably more from South Park, too, though I didn't pay too close attention to the full list. (Cartman had weaseled his way into the same town, but he was at a community college and therefore not in any of our classes or dorm areas, thank God.) We stuck together primarily because we couldn't leave certain hometown duties behind, but even at the same school our group could sometimes find ourselves worlds apart from each other.

It was supposed to be a nice, calm, normal three and a half months… but here we go with an indisputable fact about the town I grew up in: _nothing will ever be exactly 'normal.'_

This whole hellish fiasco began just about as soon as vacation did. And it started with a letter.

The first couple days of vacation had been spent, basically, getting settled back home, dealing with my mother's inane coddlings and Randy Marsh rambling out something about absolutely having to plan a barbeque (and, subsequently, Sharon telling him to chill the fuck out—her words, not mine, though mine wouldn't be too different, nor would Stan's), and, of course, making damn sure there would be a good balance between, well, you know… work and play.

Stan and I both worked five days a week during the summer, and a breathtaking stroke of luck had allowed us to have the same two sequential days off. My job was fine, nowhere near my actual major, but fine (and I mean, in South Park, there wasn't much I could do), and allowed me time to do some reading on my own… I was at a book store, after all; seven a.m. till two p.m., like I was still in friggin' high school. Stan, on the other hand, had two jobs, making it even luckier that we had the same time off: the first was at his dad's office, sorting things out for the geologists and sneaking in some study time while he could, and the second was lifeguarding at the community pool during morning hours, and it was there, on the third day of vacation, that the weirdness began.

I'd just finished a texting battle with Kenny about his want to do a huge Fourth of July thing that summer (and my hoping that he wouldn't set the town on fire), which I'll just go ahead and say I won, since he had to leave to work himself. Surprisingly, Kenny and I didn't text all that much about one thing that really kind of involved both of us: the fact that my brother and his sister had been dating for the past couple years, and the fact that Karen had just graduated, while Ike still had one year to go. Maybe it was the graduation thing that was bugging Kenny.

With Karen out of town starting this fall, we had no idea what would happen to the League.

But I pushed that from my mind for the time being, instead deciding to revel in my victory over Kenny's stupid fireworks idea and turn on some damn music on my iPhone, to make my wait for Stan go by a little faster.

The community pool was an interesting place… what had once been just an outdoor pool as part of a recreation area had now been built up into a larger building with the full-sized pool at which Stan had been a lifeguard for a little while, a wading pool for toddlers and mothers with babies, and even a sauna (which a group of us had played chicken in once to see how long we could stand it, and as a result were all dehydrated for about a week).

There were locker rooms and showers within the main building—which was kind of bland from the outside, just a big ol' grey thing that blended into the rest of the town—and an office area in the front, accessible through two sets of glass doors leading back out onto the sidewalk.

My back to the wall in the front office near the large community events board that rarely stayed up-to-date, I started up a mindless game of _Fruit Ninja._ Somebody had to beat Clyde's score, and I didn't want it to be Cartman or Craig. I didn't even care about that stupid game—fucking _Fruit Ninja, _come on—but it was something to do when I was waiting somewhere, so why the hell not, right?

When I advanced a level, I glanced up at the analog clock on the opposite wall. Stan's shift ended at three, and factoring in the time it always took him to shower, 3:10 seemed like it was signaling a pretty close meet-up time. I smiled to myself and went back to the phone. I wasn't even looking at what I was doing with that game anymore, so I switched to _Tetris._ Much better. Any second now, and I'd be cleared of this boredom and out on a date.

Summers home in South Park were interesting, because any given day could be one of two things. Normal, or utterly ridiculous. We'd gotten used to the 'normal' of our college town by now, which was nice, but being in a place where we could all just be ourselves and focus on things like, oh, classes, and parties, and elections and local concerts—it made it easy to forget that, sooner or later, we'd be back in crazy little South Park, dodging the weird, or else getting sucked up in it.

3:11. _First date of the summer, Stan, come on, get out of the damn shower already. _I couldn't wait. Going on afternoon dates in South Park made me feel like I was still a high schooler sometimes. A high schooler in the good way—in the 'everything is new and awesome and I have absolutely no responsibilities because I'm a teenager' way. Now that we were both past twenty, we were starting to look forward a little, but we'd take those 'let's be kids' opportunities wherever we could.

I started to tap my foot a bit. As I was quitting _Tetris_ to see if Stan had texted me and I just hadn't heard it, for having my headphones on, I noticed a girl walking toward me. A young woman, actually, probably around my own age. When she stopped in front of me, she leaned in a little so that she could look right up into my face as if to study me like I was a statue, which instantly got me uncomfortable, but I slid off my headphones—I'd traded in my earbuds for good-quality, sound-cancelling cans a while ago—so that I could hear her response when I asked, "Can I help you?"

The girl stood back, pleased with the fact that I had spoken first, and reached into the red tote bag she had over her left shoulder. She was a girl of average height, and she dressed normally enough, in a black and white polka-dotted dress; on the front of her black bolero was a circular white pin that looked like a nametag. Oh, great, wonderful, she was a survey girl. _Stan, hurry it the hell up, I don't want to take a survey._ Not that I dislike surveys entirely, but I hate having them forced on me, because I always feel like I _have_ _to_ answer them, just out of pity for the fact that some of those poor people handing them out don't even really want to be there, they just needed jobs. Stan always did a great job of weaving me around the people on street corners in downtown Fort Collins, but when he wasn't there to stop me, I'd find myself caught up in surveys and questionnaires, or at least really long-winded explanations along the lines of, "I really can't donate, I'm sorry, I'm a college student and have absolutely nothing."

"Ginger?" I read off the pin.

"Hmm?" said the girl, glancing at me. Her eyes were a wandering ice blue, and under them, dotting her stark, pale skin, were a few lines of freckles. Another group of freckles formed a circle on her forehead. Her lips, I noticed as she began to chew on one corner, were painted a much darker shade of red than she should have been wearing, with that skin tone. (Dear God, stop me, stop me, stop me, I really don't care about that stuff, I honestly don't, stop me…)

"Is your name Ginger?" I asked. "You didn't introduce yourself, I don't know what you're doing here."

"Oh," said the girl. Fumbling, she reached back into her tote bag. She glanced back up at me, then looked back in the bag. Finally, she pulled out a stack of envelopes, held together with a red elastic. "Let's see here…" she said, flipping through the envelopes and peering at the addressee on each. Her voice was rather low and clipped in tone and pace, to the point that I found myself—possibly illogically—afraid for whatever it was she was actually trying to say to me.

"Can I _help you?"_ I repeated. I was getting annoyed. 3:12. I heard the door from the locker room down the hall open. Thank God.

"Anderson… Ashcroft… Beckman… Bradford…" the girl mumbled to herself, going through the envelopes still.

"Hey." My heart leapt and my mind relaxed as finally I heard my boyfriend's voice, and felt him slide his right arm around my waist.

"Hi," I greeted back. I forgot all about the fact that this survey person had just been bothering me, and pressed myself into Stan's side, ticking my head up and pulling him in by the front of his shirt for a kiss. His skin and clothes were still a little damp and sticky from having just come from the showers, but he smelled amazing. I had no idea what his secret was for managing to get all that chlorine out of his hair (I usually retain the smell for at least another couple hours, no matter what I wash with), but he was carrying that stinging, untraceable clean scent that always just begged me to grab and devour and inhale him all day. If it was a strategy, it worked.

"Sorry," Stan said when I rocked back out of the kiss, "it was real crowded in there today."

"It's okay," I shrugged, moving my right hand to be placed on top of his, where he had a firm hold of my waist. "I'm just glad you're here."

"Mmhmm," said Stan, placing another small kiss on my cheek. "Who's this?" he then wondered, nodding down to the survey girl.

"I have no idea," I started to answer, "but—"

"Broflovski!" the girl exclaimed. She dug out one small white envelope from her stack, put the others away, and handed the selected one out to me. "Here you go, this is for you."

"Um… who _are_ you," I asked, giving the girl a glare, "and why are you giving that to me? What is it?"

"It's for you," she said, as if that would be enough.

"Is it _anthrax?"_ I asked. "I'm not touching that thing, you're honestly weirding me the hell out."

"It's your invitation," the girl clarified, shoving it toward me.

"Um, hey," Stan interjected, and after a quick glance at the girl's pin, he continued, "Ginger? Is that your name? Look, Ginger, I'm sure you're thinking of this as a nice gesture, but my boyfriend and I really need to be going." He stressed the word 'boyfriend' just enough, not as any kind of extreme stress or anything, but more of a 'sorry, wrong tree' kind of emphasis on the off-chance that survey girl was trying to pick me up. It wouldn't have been the first time. For either of us. We'd worked out ways to handle it.

When survey girl didn't answer, Stan said, "Come on, let's go," and started leading me toward the glass front doors.

"This envelope needs to be in the hands of Mr. Broflovski," the girl said sternly from behind us.

"Not happening," I muttered.

"Just ignore her," Stan said calmly as we made our way out.

But just as we'd gone through the second of the two doors past the front vestibule, survey girl ran out in front of us and placed the envelope in my free hand. "Hey!" I shouted at her, but she was done with me.

The envelope delivered, the girl turned on her heel, took a black and white polka-dotted parasol out of her tote bag, then said, simply, "My name isn't Ginger," before she tossed her red hair and began walking away. Her walk turned to a brisk gait as she rounded the corner, keeping to the shade of her parasol.

"Um… that was fucking weird," I commented, glaring down at the envelope the girl had so rudely shoved into my hand.

It was a simple envelope, with no return address. My address was not written on there, either. Just my name, in script that looked like it was trying to be self-important, but just came off as juvenile and chicken scratched. No stamp, no sender; nothing. I turned the envelope over and saw that it was sealed in wax. A Gothic script _T_ was pressed into the red wax that held the flap shut. The only people in town I really knew whose name began with _T_ were Token Black and Timmy Burch… or there was Craig Tucker, but none of those guys would have done anything that weird, and nor would Wendy Testaburger.

Heidi Turner? My ex? Maybe. I figured she'd forgotten all about me, though.

"Dude, just throw it away," my boyfriend suggested. "There's a trash thing right over there."

"Yeah, good deal," I decided.

Weird things happen in South Park. Strange people come up to you and give you things. It just happens. Stan and I were of the class that just ignored that kind of thing. So I did the logical thing and disposed of the mysterious envelope in the parking lot trash receptacle, a sigh of relief finding its way out of me once I had.

"There, better?" Stan guessed.

"Yeah," I said, grabbing his hand, "that was weird. But I'm just gonna let it go."

"Good for you," he grinned.

Letting shit go was kind of difficult for me, and becoming more difficult by the year, the more I stacked onto my proverbial plate. Stan was always right there, though, to let me know when I was over-thinking or over-reacting (without explicitly stating that, or I'd blow up), and was very good at coming up with alternative solutions to situations, in order to keep us both going strong without either of us getting worn out. I'd made some bad college decisions, but, hey, in the end, things had worked out so that now Stan and I would be living together all senior year, in a place we'd be sharing with Kenny (my roommate since freshman year) and Clyde.

But, again, it was summer, now. The last summer that would _allow_ me to just let things go and feel like I had no other obligations until August. "Thanks," I said in return. "So where are we going? You didn't drive, did you?"

Stan shook his head. "You?"

"Nope. It's too nice out."

"Walking it is," Stan declared brightly, as we picked up our pace. I thought for a second about the parasol the survey girl had opened up, and glanced at the sky. No threat of rain; I guess the sun was just too intense for her. Whatever. Let it go. I was sure I'd never see her again and that the letter was just some stupid flyer for something. Let it the fuck go because, dammit, I was on vacation, had nights off, and had nothing-doing date plans for the rest of this evening.

My acquired afternoon need to become heavily caffeinated kicked in the second the green Harbucks sign came into view on our walk into town, and Stan got the message right off, before I even started to tug him in that direction. I recognized the barista there as Ike's ex-girlfriend, Flora (who now, I guess, was dating his long-time friendly rival Filmore Anderson, which had caused a weird spat between the guys, even with Ike dating Karen; ohhhhh, high school drama…), and she gave me a friendly but slightly guilty wave when she saw me walk in. She probably missed Ike a bit, and it was no secret that my mom missed her, even though I swear to God, she could not shut up about what a nice girl Karen was. But there could be way worse things my mother could be obsessing over, and I knew Karen well enough to know that she was on the right track.

Even though Harbucks couldn't compare to the local coffee shops I was growing used to in our college town, it served its purpose in dosing out the espresso. But as we were making our way outside after claiming our drinks, a man who looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties walked out from the manager's office, off to the far right of the espresso bar, his icy eyes locked right on me. He was a lanky man, though a little shorter than me, and I didn't recognize him as anyone I'd seen in town before, so I could not fathom why he'd need to talk to me.

Clearly, he did, though, and took the time to stop us before we made it outside. "Kyle Broflovski?" he asked me in a pinched voice.

"Uh… yeah?" I said. "Was something wrong with my debit card or something? I can pay cash."

The man's eyebrows were so fucking light, I couldn't even really see them, which made the white grin he flashed at that point one of the creepiest things I'd seen in a while. His pale skin wrinkled at the corners of his eyes, under which were a pattern of dark freckles, and he said, "No, no problem at all. But save that cash, would you? You'll want to invest."

"In?"

The strawberry-blonde man then set an envelope into my hand, and disappeared back into his office, but not before I caught a glimpse of a circular pin on his red polo shirt that said, in the same precise print as survey girl's, _GINGER._ Which was not normally a man's name. He wasn't _exactly_ a Ginger, as the girl had been, given his hair tones, but still, close enough.

And he'd shoved the same motherfucking envelope at me. Maybe not the _same_ envelope, since this was pristine white, rather than covered in the trash the other one was decomposing in, but it still had my name written on it, and was sealed with a wax _T_ on the back.

I disposed of it—and, incidentally, my coffee—at the trash can by the door, and aggressively pumped out hand sanitizer from the dispenser above the trash until my palms were doused. _"Dude,"_ Stan reprimanded me, turning his nose up at the pungent waft of the sanitizer.

"Yeah, I poured too much," I realized. "Fucking shit, though, what the…"

"Come on," Stan suggested, backing into the door to hold it open for me. At the same time, he held his hands out, palms up, for me to wipe off some of the sanitizer despite his admitted hatred for the commercial stuff and how it really didn't get your hands clean. It felt like it did, though, so I didn't care.

"Thanks," I muttered. I wiped my palms on his, which made me realize that he, too, had followed suit in ditching his coffee. "I'm sorry," I added, shaking my head. I lathered my hands up with the sanitizer, which dried up and stung in the cooling May breeze. "I'm just… kinda weirded out right now."

"Umm… yeah," Stan agreed, "no kidding. No need to be sorry, Kyle, that was fucked up."

"Yeah!" I said, my heart rate working itself up as my nerves built. "And invest? Asking me to fucking invest in something? What the fuck am I going to invest in? I'm a college student!"

"I could invest in a bottle of white and we could just go home, get drunk, and watch really bad Canadian soaps until they make sense," Stan offered.

"Jesus Christ. Can we please?"

"Sure. But can we wait till at least after seven for that?" Stan's shy smile was enough to remind me that neither of us really liked touching alcohol in the afternoon, unless it was some family get-together and we were prepared to pace ourselves. Both of us had hang-ups about anything harder than wine, due to Stan's family history of alcoholism and my personal history in nursing it, so we watched ourselves whenever liquor did come into the equation.

In a couple weeks, I'd be twenty-one and be able to accompany Stan on the wine trips (or, you know, actually order wine out at dinner and stuff), but for now, I did enjoy being able to just enjoy ourselves on a night in.

Which _did not fucking happen_ that night, by the way. Did not fucking happen. No. No, what happened that night was me getting more neurotic than ever, Stan going from concerned boyfriend to personal fucking bodyguard, and Kenny McCormick all but painting an enormous green question mark in the sky.

Because the letters did not stop.

"Am I Harry Motherfucking Potter?" I screamed after another letter addressed to me was slipped into my hands on the street a couple hours after the Harbucks incident. "What the _Christ?"_

Stan grabbed me around the shoulders, sent a scowl in the direction of the heavily-freckled mail carrier who'd shoved the letter my way, and led me off the sidewalk. "You okay?" Stan asked when we'd walked around to the side of a building facing the backside of another.

I gathered my breath and took a look around.

Were we ever back in South Park. That was all I could think about. The past few summers had been fine, as if atoning for the winter that had rained insanity on our town. As if going away to school in Fort Collins had been the answer all along. Like that was a cure or something. That it was the one thing we'd needed to dust off the dirt that clung to everyone in South Park… the abnormal situations, the absurdities of seemingly level-headed people, the just fucking stupid things that would go on around us at all times.

Being a part of the League had taught me to stop taking things like that in stride, though. I'd become wary to the fact that anything odd—like, oh, you know, cults—could be potentially dangerous and needing of our interference if there was any hope of making that particular threat stop.

Now, I don't have PTSD or anything. Yes, I carry the memory of everything that happened during the crisis, but I don't bring it up often, because a lot of it is painful. But right there, as soon as Stan asked me those two little, but weighted, words, I began having what I suppose I could equate to war flashbacks.

Stan's uncle, Jimbo, would sometimes regale us as kids with stories about Korea. Sometimes he'd just slip it into conversation, and it would come and go as easily as talk about the weather. Other times, rarer times, Jimbo would say something he hadn't meant to, and go silent. I could remember once, when we were twelve and Jimbo was attempting to get Stan and me to watch war documentaries, the man started yelling something at a person who wasn't there in the room with us. I had talked to Stan and Kenny about maybe quitting the League after that, but we were just kids. We hadn't really had fights with fatalities yet.

But right now, that day, that warm May day between junior and senior year of college, I had a flashback so vivid it made me crumble. I was not ready for that. I did not bring it up in day to day conversation. It did not cross my mind. Not when I saw the scar, not when I walked by courthouses, not when Kenny brought up R'lyeh at meetings. Only when I heard gunshots. And, due to my nerves, that afternoon. Because of where we were standing.

I grabbed the front of Stan's shirt, pressed myself up close to him, and asked, "Can we just go?"

"Y-yeah, sure," Stan said, pure sympathy gliding into his tone. He rubbed my back, and I felt his breath catch when I didn't pull away. He knew damn well that I didn't like getting like this, and knew even moreso that I never got that emotional in public. "Kyle… Kyle, hey, what's up? What's going on? I mean… I agree that this shit's really weird, and all…"

"I just don't want to talk right here," I said. "That's all."

"Yeah?"

"I just don't," I said firmly, "want to talk about weird shit in an alley, Stan."

Because I'd watched him die in one.

It had come up every now and then during our senior year of high school. Hell, our entire first year of dating had been spent almost in fear, with us glancing behind each other all the time, just to make sure another near-death experience wasn't waiting around the corner. Our relationship was built on a solid pact to protect each other, no matter what, to the point that we'd kind of carved out our own little world. I hated remembering that incident in the alley now, though; it hurt too fucking much. Stan felt the same way.

We both had scars from the Cthulhu crisis. Even when we didn't talk about them, they were there. Neither of us wanted our entire existence as a pair to be defined by that crisis alone, though (God, there was so much more than that behind us), so it scared me more now than it would have three years before to be having these flashbacks at such a time.

Stan understood my nerves, helped me gather myself, and kept an arm around me during our entire walk back to my house. I was so ready to make good on his offer to get drunk and watch horrible TV. Canadian soap operas could cure any bad mood or nerve-wracking situation. Especially this one we'd just gotten invested in that had the Queef Sisters playing a lesbian couple who didn't know they were actually long-lost twins, and then I think one of them got a concussion or something and the other one got pregnant by the milkman (because they still have milkmen in Canada, apparently), and oh, dear God, it's terrible. Clyde watched it high once and didn't stop laughing for two hours. Yeah, that shit could distract me.

Except no.

No. Because as soon as we came within distance to my house, some kid, a guy who seemed barely fifteen, was shoving something into the mailbox. I was boiling over once I noticed that, and probably would have lost it and at least gotten a punch in on the kid had Stan not held me back. So all I could manage was a holler of, "What the fuck?"

I could have sworn I recognized this one. Couldn't completely tell, though. I didn't know the kids in town very well anymore, not the ones below Ike's grade. Maybe he was someone's younger brother or something, but more than just the circular _Ginger_ pin the accurately-labeled kid was wearing gave me a sense of unease. Not to mention the threat of another flashback. Because I was just so Goddamn skittish at this point, my head was going haywire.

I clenched my fists in an attempt to control myself, and the kid flashed me a pasty-faced grin before he walked away. Stan opened his mouth to console—or possibly help control—me, but I was beyond irate and didn't even want to listen. I just wanted to confirm that another letter had just been shoved into my mailbox.

Fuming but terrified, I shrugged Stan's arm off of me and stormed up to the mailbox to tear it open. That mailbox seemed to be getting less cluttered by the year, what with how quickly my parents had gone digital with their bills and newsletters, mostly at Ike's pressuring, so opening it up was like brushing back growth from the mouth of a cave. The domed metal box was empty but for the letter.

My hands were shaking when I drew it out, and when I turned it over to see that ominous wax seal, I couldn't breathe for a good five seconds. I bit my lower lip, halfway between wanting to call the cops and wanting to just burn the thing and get drunk and forget about it. "Okay," I said when I could finally draw in a breath again. "I'm not just mad anymore. This is fucking terrifying."

Stan walked up in front of me, and held a hand out. I could tell that he was trying to be calm, which I appreciated, but at the same time, when Stan faked one emotion, it was hard to tell what he was really thinking. That bothered me, since I could normally read him so well; I've always been able to. But when he's putting something on, I find myself wanting more and more to know the truth. If he was as petrified as I was, in this instance, or if he thought I was over-reacting.

I surrendered the letter to his open palm, and Stan held it up to the sun. "Shit, man, it's really thick paper," he said. "But it's all typed up, I can see that much. So I doubt it's a personal letter."

"Yeah?"

"Maybe you should just open it," Stan shrugged. He held the envelope between us again, easily able to read that I didn't want to be touching it anymore. If he could read that, though, why suggest I open it? Or maybe he was offering to open it for me. Not that I wanted that, exactly, either. "It's probably just some stupid chainmail thing and they'll stop once you open the envelope."

"Nobody sends chainmail anymore, Stan," I reminded him. "Especially sealed in wax. And no, I don't want to open it. This is fucking disturbing. It's gone from weird to disturbing, dude. I don't want to open it on my own."

He cast me a look. "Kyle."

"Stan, I want to open it at the base."

Stan stared at me for a moment, then looked down at the envelope, then back at me; envelope, me, envelope, me, then finally commented, _"Dude."_

"I know it sounds stupid, but did you catch anything kind of strange about the people we've seen try to hand this off to me?" I said, folding my arms in defiance against the situation. "Plus, the pins, and…"

His normally serene blue eyes went wide with shock. "They were all…"

"They were all Gingers, Stan," I said as I huffed out a breath.

Stan paused for a second, then pinched the bridge of his nose and stood back. "No. No, no, no," he said, groaning a bit. "Oh, my God, no. This is… that happened a _long_ time ago, and this has nothing to do with—or, I mean, it shouldn't…"

"Look, Stan," I said firmly, "I don't want my summer to be ruined by people trying to hand me something they're calling an 'invitation.' And to be honest, you know what? I wouldn't put this whole thing _past_ _Cartman_ for orchestrating, either."

"Dude, he doesn't do that shit anymore."

"Not as much," I agreed, "but still…"

"You want to call a meeting before just confronting Cartman?" Stan asked warily.

"Ugh, that asshole will just deny, deny, deny, but I know for a fact he tells the truth around Kenny," I pointed out. "Swear to God, Kenny's the only one who can make real threats on him." Because Kenny had the authority to kick people out of the League. Even Cartman knew that. Technically, Kenny and Cartman started the League, albeit not for the same purposes, back in fourth grade. The latter had learned the value of teamwork as the years went on, but the former was still cautious. We may have started out as 'Coon and Friends,' but we didn't just call ourselves the 'Shadow League' now for nothing. This was Kenny's turf, and besides, if there was any kind of Ginger cult resurrection going on, we had the power to find out about it.

Stan sighed. "Okay. We'll call a meeting. Fine. Kenny'll love it, anyway."

I took in a deep breath, and was finally able to smile. "Thanks, Stan," I said, a little cautiously.

"No problem." He tapped the letter into his free palm a couple times, chewed the inside of his cheek in contemplation, then looked me right in the eyes and asked, "You wanna talk to Kenny now, don't you?"

"Yeah, I kinda do."

"All right." Stan held onto the letter with one hand, and wrapped the other around me as we began to walk back toward town. "Let's figure this whole thing out as quickly as we can, huh?"

"Mm, please," I agreed. "Thanks for not thinking I'm totally nuts about this."

"No, you brought up good points," Stan let me know. "I just… it did happen a _long_ time ago."

"Yeah, but this damn town can't just let shit die."

"No kidding."

We were, of course, referring to an uprising which was… well, to be honest, partially our fault.

Prior to becoming the Coon (and even several, several times after), our cockroach of an acquaintance, Eric Cartman, had undergone several missions of, shall we say, 'purging.' In order to prove himself right and superior about just about everything, he went as far as to attempt genocide a few different times, including—but not limited to—getting rid of both Jews and Gingers. I happen to be Jewish, as previously stated, and, while not Ginger _exactly_ (I can tan, thank you very much… and I like to think that that has nothing to do with my mom being from Jersey, since that's a gene I hate bringing up), my red hair was enough to make 'Ginger' another label Cartman constantly tried to rip on me for.

Fucking asshole.

I was still sour about a lot of the shit he'd attempted to use to make me feel inferior, but at the same time, the _sheer consistency_ of that stupid brand of bullying kept me tough throughout school, and the Ginger fiasco was one of my attempts to get back at Cartman. Give him a taste of his own medicine. It hadn't worked. It hadn't worked, and had resulted in first his banding together all of the Ginger kids in town into a purist cult of their own, and secondly in his discovering that the father he'd had killed (who, incidentally, had also been a part of the Cult of Cthulhu) was Ginger as well.

This Goddamn town. I tell you.

So, no. No, I would not have put it past Cartman to try to be rustling up something from the past to get me all pissed about something or other. I mean, the timing was impeccable. Just before graduating? Of course. He'd left the rest of us alone for a pretty long time. Enough time to plot some kind of stupid grand finale.

So the answer was to stop it before it started. Things did, however, prove to be much heavier than we were expecting in this particular situation.

Stan and I caught up with Kenny pretty easily; it was a help that I'd been texting with him earlier, since I knew exactly where he'd be. He tended to shut his phone off while he worked and tuck it away, which was smart, since Kenny's work was more hands-on than any the rest of us did for part-time jobs. He'd gone from painting and detailing throughout high school to nearly full-on contract work with some of the town builders. He worked under the table so as to avoid being taxed, which allowed him the extra after grants to go through school, not to mention help support his sister, and he kind of put some of us to shame, with how hard a worker he'd become.

When we found him, on the street past the rhinoplasty office at which Stan's mother once worked, he was covered in dusty plaster and mixing cement in a five-gallon bucket on the sidewalk. His orange tee-shirt had been stained a few different shades of off-white from both plaster and paint; jeans and sneakers were similarly ruined, but we both knew Kenny loved it. Beneath his plaster-dusted thicket of messy blonde hair, he'd strapped on clear construction goggles, and was wearing a dust mask over his nose and mouth. And, of course, it wouldn't be Kenny if he wasn't muttering some profanity under his breath… in this case, clearly about the rough time the cement was giving him.

"You like that, motherfucker?" he was saying when we came within a couple feet of where he stood. His words came out slightly muffled from the dust mask, and his breath was out of synch as he stirred the troublesome, thick liquid around in the bucket. "Let's go! Let's just fuckin' go!"

"Everything okay, McCormick?" a man called from around the side of the building.

"Shit's almost done!" he called back. "We're gonna wanna pour it fast!"

Stan halted me before I could take another step; I hadn't realized how horribly I'd been paying attention to the actual surroundings until he did. Kenny's work area was surrounded by bright orange cones—he wasn't just working on a building, but the whole sidewalk around it as well.

"Yo, Kenny!" Stan called over.

Without breaking his stirring rhythm, Kenny glanced over at us, and ticked his head in greeting. "What's good, dudes?" he said in response. "Can you hold up like three minutes? I break once this shit's done."

Stan and I nodded, and waited while Kenny and a couple other members of the crew poured the cement into the mould on the sidewalk. Once the job was done, Kenny thrust both fists high in the air in full success and congratulations. The foreman passed our friend a stack of bills and slapped him on the back; Kenny then passed back his goggles and mask, liberated his hair of some of the dusty plaster, picked up a beaten rucksack, and walked over to meet up with us.

"'Sup, guys?" he grinned, stuffing his cash into his wallet before digging into one of the pockets of his bag.

"Dude, you smell fucking dank," I commented, turning my face away.

"No shit, right?" Kenny laughed. Luckily, the thing he was rummaging for turned out to be spray deodorant.

"Close to shit."

"Play nice," he smirked as he liberally doused himself in aerosol deodorant. "And now I'm the man you wish your man smelled like."

"Stan smells fine, and shut up," I said, even though Stan was laughing at this point. I probably would have been, too, had I not been so wound-up with nerves.

"Now look at my hand, what do I have?" Kenny said, still bastardized-quoting the ads that had run for damn long enough by now. He flipped me off. "It's that bird you like."

"Fuck yourself hard, Kenny. Do you have a minute?"

"I've got a few. Come on."

"Wait, I thought you said you got a break," I noted.

"Yeah," said Kenny, "between this job and my next one. Walk with me."

Stan and I shrugged at each other and walked on Kenny's right as he checked traffic (quite less frantically than he used to, but still with plenty of caution) and crossed to head further into town. "Dude, do you _have_ time off?" Stan asked.

"Some. You should know." Well, that was a given; any time Kenny wasn't working was spent either with his girlfriend or being Mysterion. (Or probably both sometimes, as far as we knew.) "What's goin' on? Planning something?"

"Honestly?" I said. "I want to call a meeting."

"Like tomorrow?"

"Like, as soon as we can."

Kenny stopped abruptly, and turned to look directly at me. He passed his quizzical blue-eyed gaze between me and Stan, nearly every trace of his previous carelessness gone. "What's going on, guys?" he asked, his tone much more stern.

I glanced around to make sure we were alone on the sidewalk, then tapped Stan's arm a couple of times. Stan's own nerves were finally coming out into the open as he handed the sealed envelope to Kenny. "This is the fourth one someone's tried to pass off to Kyle today," he said.

"The fourth wha—oh… shit…" Kenny said, his face growing pale as he looked over the envelope.

"What?" Stan wondered. I couldn't even move, let alone think or speak. "Kenny, what's 'oh shit?' Kenny? Dude?"

"What time is it?" Kenny asked out of the blue.

"That a trick question?" Stan asked. Kenny shook his head, and Stan consulted his phone. "Uh… six-thirty?"

"Fuck," Kenny muttered. "Keep followin'." We did as he asked, and Kenny kept his pace down the sidewalk, his eyes staring straight forward as he said, "Guys, I wanna keep talking, but I can't blow off this job. Hundred bucks for this one gig and Karen needs it to pay the rest of her room and board next year. Shit. Meeting. Yes."

"Kenny, do you know what this letter is?" I wondered, my heart fluttering half with excitement and half with anxiety as an answer became something slightly more within my reach.

"Can't say I know exactly," Kenny let out on a single breath. He rounded one last corner, then ticked his chin up at a man seated outside a new-looking office building. Cans of paint lay in front of the building's door; Kenny exchanged a few words with the man, who promised him pay at the end of the night, and then our friend set down his bag, picked up a can of brown paint and began to do some detail work around a window to the right of the door.

"Kenny!" I said, stressing his name as I attempted to remember how to breathe.

"I dunno what's in the envelope, either," he finally told us, completely focused on his paint job. "But yeah. We need to have a meeting about it. Luckily, tomorrow's Wednesday. Don't open it till we're all together, okay?"

"Wasn't planning on it, but…"

"Don't chuck it, either."

"That, too."

"Kenny," Stan said, his voice sounding tense, "you do think it's a good idea to do this at a meeting?"

"Uh, yeah," said Kenny, looking right at us, "actually, I think that's a great idea."

"Really?" I wondered. "Why?"

Kenny's expression went grave, and he turned back to continue detailing the outer wall of his current project building. With each precise stroke, he seemed to be having a different thought, but he stopped, with a need for more paint as well as a need to speak, and finally answered, "Red keeps getting them, too."

– – –

The Shadow League. God, I still love saying it. There's so much for all of us to be proud of, those of us who had taken part in that.

We've known, for a while now, that not all of us would be able to let that part of our lives go. It had been an understanding over the past few years, since high school graduation, that, if we were physically able, each and every one of us would always be there to help out the Shadow League in whatever way possible. Thank God we hadn't let it go. I shudder to think what may have happened to the contrary, honestly. South Park relied on us and needed us, and… I mean, sure, not all of us would be around forever, but whenever we could, we'd answer any call. A part of me will always be the Human Kite. A part of Stan will always be Toolshed. That's just the way things have been, and the way things will be.

Led by Mysterion, the crew was rounded out at the end of junior year by the two of us, plus the following: Clyde Donovan, as Mosquito, more or less the second in command; Eric Cartman, as the Coon; Token Black, as TupperWear; Wendy Testaburger, as Marpesia; Timmy Burch, as Iron Maiden; my brother, Ike, as Red Serge; and Karen McCormick, as the Guardian Angel, a hero who first had watched over the streets of Salt Lake City before Karen once again relocated to South Park after a stint at private school. And then there was Craig. Craig did not want an alter ego, but we needed him. He was just… Craig. And he was really, really good at almost anything he tried.

During our senior year of high school, we had added on two adjunct members: Kenny and Clyde's respective significant others. Red did not want an alter ego, primarily because she idealized Mysterion so much and did not want to overstep boundaries, but she was something of a liaison to us, since she had a talent for keeping her ear out for the right kinds of information. It helped that one of the only two female cops on the South Park force (ridiculous, I know!) was an avid shopper at the dressmaker for whom Red worked… and more fortunate still that this woman tended to talk about her day quite often, or let fly a few things while on the phone with her husband, or would simply still be wearing her radio. And Red always had a pen at the ready.

Bebe, too, was quick to take in information where she could, and, having been one of the convicted insane during the Cthulhu crisis, had put forth even more of an effort to help, to the point of adopting an identity of her own, since she would sometimes communicate with us over our hidden wires and didn't want her name spoken on the job. To the League, Bebe was Delphi, a literal oracle who kept our records and files in order, and who took over archival duties during my brother's stints abroad. She had joined her best friend Wendy in turning to classical mythology for hero names, and the two were a pretty damn good team.

Last and most certainly not least, there was Butters Stotch. Or Marjorine Stotch, depending on how he or she felt that day. Butters had been renting a room from Wendy's parents since the end of the Cthulhu crisis, when he had left two very important parts of his life behind. The first was his childhood home. He had not spoken to his parents, as far as any of us knew, since the day he'd gone out on his own. All the better for him, though; we were all impressed, and kind of proud.

The second thing Butters had left behind, having been used by another of Cthulhu's ilk, a creature by the name of Nyarlathotep, and by his own partner in very literal crime, was one of his alter egos. We had not seen nor heard anything of Professor Chaos since his retirement that year. Mysterion had even made a public statement, at Butters's request, on the topic of Chaos's end. Butters had been in and out of League meetings for a while after that, and had become a member with a much different spin than Chaos by the end of the summer leading up to high school senior year.

After Stan and I talked with Kenny, we checked around with the others and set the meeting for an early dinner time the following day, being a time that all of us were able to get together at once. Tradition had seen us meeting regularly on Wednesday nights, so we'd kept those free throughout college (even away at school, we'd meet on occasion), and this particular meeting was no different.

Wednesday was one of my full days off, and it seemed like this was the right summer to have Thursdays clear, too, if we were going to have to start pulling long nights. So much for balancing work and play.

Kenny, Timmy, Token and Wendy were at the base behind Token's house first, and Stan and I arrived at the same time Clyde showed up with Bebe. Clyde was looking pretty ecstatic; he had taken his superhero persona almost as seriously as Kenny always had, feeling that it was his way of really doing good.

"Yo!" Clyde greeted, as we four made our way through the coded gate that led onto the path which then twined through trees to the land on which the base stood. "Kyle, Stan, what's goin' on, guys?"

"I'd say not much, but…" I said, attempting to laugh.

"Dude, I heard about the letters, that sucks," said Clyde.

"Red's freaking out," Bebe added. "If I were her, I'd've called out of work today. Poor girl."

"But, hey," Clyde said to her, clearly enthused, "Shadow League's on it, babe, we got this. Gonna be a hell of a summer if we're on a mission, huh?"

"Dunno how you can be _this_ excited about possible terrorist threats," I commented with a tiny bit of humor, "but at least we won't be bored."

_"There_ ya go," Clyde laughed, smacking me on the back. Clyde had made it somewhat of a personal mission to make sure I didn't go supremely anal-retentive on the apartment, to the point that we joked back and forth about just how much of an elitist perfectionist I could—sometimes not-so-jokingly—be. Stan would step in when it got too stupid, or Bebe would haul Clyde off on some spur-of-the-moment date or another, but things remained friendly for us.

Things were pretty friendly for just about everyone in the League. We were lucky that way.

The four of us caught up with the four already at the base… Token and Wendy in particular, since we saw them so rarely. The two were very good friends (very, very good friends, it seemed, given that Token kept on touching Wendy's shoulder, or that Wendy would purposefully brush against him) even after their breakup two years prior. It was sad when they broke up, and kind of weird to meet their new flames the summer before this one (Token's in person and Wendy's over v-chat on her iPhone), but things seemed to be working back around. Seemed to be, anyway. I didn't know all of the details, but both of them were allegedly single again.

The breakup was mostly odd for us to think about due to just how close they'd become during the Cthulhu battle. I mean, Kenny and Red were solid as anything after that; Stan and I were closer than ever; Ike and Karen had started a spark; hell, Clyde and Bebe _were engaged._

To each their own, though. To each their own.

After we'd arrived, Craig wandered in from the back yard (where he couldn't have been smoking since it wasn't allowed around the base, so what he was up to I had no idea), followed by my brother, having finished doing some paperwork for our dad at his law firm. Ike, fifteen and about to be a senior, had decided on taking the law route, while I'd diverted in favor of majoring in engineering. Despite having truly entered his teenage years, Ike hadn't grown much, nor had he really filled out at all. I never, ever pulled the 'sorry, dude, you're Canadian' excuse against him, but I mean, no one can outrun their genetics.

Jeez, was _that_ ever a statement for that whole damn summer.

Ike said his hellos, gave Kenny his dinner order, and traipsed down the hallway from the living room area at the front of the base in which we'd be getting started straight to the back, where Timmy could be found, as almost always, getting a head start on the databases in the back.

Karen pulled in under-the-table money herself at a couple of different jobs in town, primarily waitressing, though she was also a pretty active dog walker and part-time barista as well. She happened to have waitressing shifts on Wednesday afternoons, and was therefore often in charge of quite literally bringing home the bacon for Kenny. And all of us. The restaurant at which she worked had an extensive menu of sandwiches, wraps and burgers, so Kenny would text her our orders before her shift ended, and we'd be ensured a damn good, not to mention cheap, dinner.

There was one among us, though, who would text Kenny about four times throughout the day when he knew there was going to be a meeting, just to make _damn fucking sure_ he got his fucking food, and that was Eric Cartman. Floor manager at an electronics store in town, he oddly enough worked a lot (because he liked ordering people around, probably), and showed up only about half an hour before Karen was scheduled to get off of work.

The rest of us were all communing and catching up over sodas (or, for Bebe and Wendy, sparkling water, since the girls had apparently sworn off of soda… and we didn't touch alcohol during meetings), when Cartman made his entrance, calling out, "Hey, assholes, this better be good," before even so much as 'hello.'

Bebe and Wendy shared a sort of 'well that was fun while it lasted' glance, but all of us went on acting like Cartman's douchebaggery didn't affect us. For the most part, it didn't, but he kept on trying every now and then.

All of us were more or less in a circle, all on the floor, when he walked in; Kenny was texting Red like crazy and was more or less removed from initial conversation, so Clyde took on his co-leader role and tried to keep an open atmosphere.

"Hey, man," Clyde greeted Cartman, who gave a bit of a wave in response. "Where's Butters? We just need him, Red and Karen to start."

"How the fuck should I know?" Cartman spat back. "Food here yet?"

"Um, not yet," said Bebe, which marked this as probably only the third time in the past few years she actually said something in direct response to Eric Cartman, since she'd been of the 'ignore him and he'll go away' crowd for a _long_ time. "I don't get why you have to be such an asshole to Butters, though. Isn't he your—"

"He's a little bitch, and it's really none of your business, 'kay?"

Stan and I shared a glance, and shared an eye roll with Kenny. We didn't hang out with Butters all that much at school, since he'd almost immediately started running in different circles (which was good for him, though), and Cartman had gone to a different college entirely, but every damn summer it seemed like the same thing: one was pissed at the other for God knows what reason, and hell if I knew if they'd ever actually been officially together. Like Cartman would ever admit it if they were.

The thing was, Cartman used people the way anyone else would use toilet bowl cleaner: when it suited him to do so, and only to keep himself from wading in his own shit. Apparently, this was a 'Butters can piss off' month, or week, or day, or span of twelve seconds, and this was just something else added to the routine of why none of us could expect anything natural from the guy none of us had ever really bothered to call by his first name.

I heard Bebe mutter something to Clyde, and he responded by changing the subject. "Stan, dude, any calls on the Broncos this year?"

"All or nothin', man," Stan grinned back, very clearly glad for the change of pace. "Fuckin' Pats are going down before the Superbowl."

"For once," Clyde laughed.

Kenny swept a hand over his head to indicate that the football jargon was way too much for him, and left the room temporarily to answer the next knock that came. Given how long he stayed at the door, I knew that it was Red.

When she walked in, hand in hand with Kenny, Red seemed a bit shaken. No kidding. She'd been getting letters, as well. The same sort I had been bombarded with. Probably since I hadn't thrown this one away, no others had come, but I was still being cautious, and had been kind of a mess during the day, even with Stan keeping his eyes out for problems around corners as well.

Red struck up a normal enough conversation with the other girls right off, though, so we could at least keep a semi-controlled air for a while yet. When, a few minutes later, Marjorine showed up, things remained fine, even with Cartman shooting her highly unnecessary death glares every few minutes. After all, we were only four days into summer, and this was, some strain aside, a pretty damn solid group of friends. Our team, now into our twelfth active year (holy shit), had benefited immensely from how tight we'd always been… and reciprocally, we were all still close with each other with plenty of thanks to the League's existence.

Karen came through the front door after her shift was over, her arms piled with bags and boxes of burgers, sandwiches, and waffle fries enough to feed an army, proclaiming, "Kenny, you've gotta stop using me for food!"

Kenny looked up from where he sat on the couch, and flashed his sister a big, white grin before hopping up to help her with her load. "I'm not using you, sis, you know that," he assured her, giving her a pat on the head while Karen helped Marjorine kick Cartman away from the food before he could descend upon it like the miserable vulture he was. "We pay and we tip, right guys?"

There were some grumbles—Clyde and Cartman—but overall affirmation of Kenny's statement as each of us coughed up what we owed Karen and then some. Token always slipped her a tip, too, even though Karen continuously refused his money, despite his being the richest of all of us, simply because he was letting her stay at the base as her home. Kenny and Karen had lived at the base—so, technically, with the Black family—for quite some time, having separated from their parents and older brother (and for good reason), and it was still where Kenny primarily made camp on his vacations home from school, when he wasn't staying with his girlfriend, since he felt so responsible for his sister.

"Thanks," Karen smiled, pocketing her tips before she could count them, since she never liked dealing with money in front of others. "You guys're worth lugging all this stuff, though. I'm gonna go change. Kenny, don't let fatass eat my food!"

"We'll keep him in a barrier," Kenny laughed, waving to his sister.

"Oh, hey, Ike's back in the meeting room," I added before Karen could leave, "just so you know."

"Thanks, Kyle!" my brother's girlfriend grinned back. "See you guys in a few. I mean it about my food!""

Cartman huffed out a breath and, while chomping down on his first of two loaded burgers, hungrily eyed the cardboard boxes meant for the other two. "She didn't say anything about Ike's," he just had to say.

"Goddammit, dude, choke down your own shit first," Token reprimanded him.

"There's crackers and cheese if you, like, _need_ something later," Kenny added, "but for fuck's sake, man, seriously."

"Oh, whatever," Cartman grumbled.

"Chew with your mouth closed," Marjorine added, ripping off a corner of her sandwich.

Cartman muttered out another, "Whatever," pretended to ignore her, and went back to his food.

By this point, we'd all pretty much settled in: Token, Clyde and Bebe sat on the sofa against the wall that faced the TV, while Stan had surrendered the most comfortable beanbag chair in the world to me, on the condition that he could lean against my right knee as a makeshift chair; Kenny, Red, Wendy and Craig had admitted to being fine sitting on the floor; Cartman had taken the armchair directly across from the beanbag, and when Marjorine had been shunned from his lap to make way for things he didn't make a fuss over putting in his mouth she stole a pillow from behind her reluctant friend and used that as her floor cushion beside Wendy. Timmy was positioned near the hall that would lead directly back to the meeting room, and Ike and Karen both sat on the floor under the TV, both more interested in each other than their food. I couldn't help but try to sneak glances at them when I could—being out of town, Kenny and I missed out on a lot of the fun of spying on our siblings' relationship.

"So, hey," said Kenny, biting down on the straw of the cream soda Karen had brought for him, "mind if we get down to business right now? This shit's bugging me, man."

"Dude, I'm all for getting right into a meeting, too," Clyde mentioned, "but fuck, Kenny, can we eat like, two bites?"

Kenny relented. "Sure, man, sorry. Shit just gets to me, though, y'know?"

"Also, you're stoked to get the League back up and running, right?" Stan accurately guessed.

"Oh, like you wouldn't believe, dude," Kenny grinned.

"Oh, no, we believe you," I laughed for both Stan and myself, leaning down to steal one of Stan's sweet potato fries.

"Dude, if you like the sweet potato ones so much, why not order them yourself?" my boyfriend reprimanded me, giving me that little glare he tries to put on whenever I go into what he has dubbed 'hypocrite mode.' ('Hypocrite mode' also includes: me saying I'm too tired to go out and then getting a second wind once Stan's dead set on staying in, me admitting to liking 'just this one song… okay also this one' from artists I otherwise claim to hate, and me not voicing an opinion on something until after the decision has been made.)

"I just want, like, two," I said, chomping down on the one I'd stolen.

"You're gonna be diving back for more in five minutes, I bet you," Stan fake-groaned, passing another, smaller one up to me.

"This one's tiny, that doesn't count."

"Oh, my God. Okay. Here."

Stan made a show of rolling his eyes, feigning irritation, and scooped up a handful of his fries, which were then surrendered to the open lid of my own cardboard takeout box.

I grinned and laughed a little, then ruffled his hair as I said an overly sweet, "Thank you."

"Mmhmm." Stan glanced up at me, put on a sideways smirk, and said, "You're lucky you're cute." In accurate retaliation, I leaned down and forward to give him a kiss, which he gladly returned.

I mussed with his hair again before I sat back up in the beanbag chair in order to eat and give my full attention to the quasi-meeting at hand.

I had to admit, even though we were sure to find ourselves entangled in a mess the likes of which we had not known in quite some time, I was glad to be there. The situation was laced with nostalgia, but we really were going to need all the help we could get.

"So, Red," I started, "you've been getting letters, too?"

"Yeah," she answered nervously, cuddling up into Kenny's side. "At first I thought it was some kind of awful joke, but then they just kept coming."

"I know, right?" I complained. "When did yours start coming?"

"Two days ago," Red told me. She picked up a stray piece of shredded carrot out of her takeout box and gnawed on the end of it as she worked herself through the issue. "You?"

"Yesterday," I sighed. I felt Stan lean a little more against my right leg, and place his hand around my ankle, at just the same time Kenny started to pat back his girlfriend's long, firey hair.

Red's hair had always been her signature. While I just sort of happen to have lightish red hair as a result of getting a lot of the little genetic details out of my mother's side of the family, Red had straight hair of a deep enough red hue for it to provide her with a nickname she favored over the name she'd been given at birth. She'd been one of only a couple of girls with red hair in our grade, let alone our school, and made it kind of clear that she was very proud of it.

Right now, though, it seemed like her favorite quality was going to be giving her more trouble than anyone deserved.

"Sorry to hear you've been getting them, too," I said.

"Well, you, too," Red returned to me. "What was really scary was that before they started coming in my mailbox, people were handing them to me on the street!"

"Me, too."

"Were they," Red asked cautiously, "you know… um… Gingers?"

"What?" Cartman perked up.

"Oh, Lord," I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose in frustration.

"No, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but _who_ called it?" said Cartman. "Right here. Me. I _said_ they were gonna strike again. I _said—"_

"No celebrating yet," Kenny snapped at him. "You're on the list of suspects for sending these."

_"Aye!"_ Cartman spat back. "Kenny, why would I have any reason to harass Red and Kyle, huh?"

"Let me count the ways," Stan mumbled.

"Stan, can you shut up? Me and Kenny are talking."

"No, you're arguing," Wendy cut in. I looked up, patted Stan's shoulder as thanks for his interference, and gave Wendy my attention. Despite the fact that she was focused on her hummus wrap, her proverbial quills were pointed at Cartman. "Before the issue was accurately addressed, at that," Wendy continued.

"So, let's accurately address the issue," Token said smoothly, playing the unbiased party, which was something he'd always been fairly good at.

There was a bit of an air of disquiet in the room, but I could feel that most of the hidden curious glances from our friends around the circle were being directed at either me or Red at any given moment.

Then again, we were the conversation. We were the two redheads in the room, and we were the ones getting the letters from people wearing pins that marked them as Gingers. Which did make me feel uncomfortable and which got weirder to talk about the longer both Red and I recalled our individual—and, eerily, not so different—experiences with being handed what was clearly some sort of propaganda.

"This is so weird," Karen commented, once both Red and I had said our share, and others, mostly Kenny, had offered some input and reaction to the situation. "Honestly, and… I mean, Ike and Timmy, you guys can back me up on this…"

"Timmy," said Timmy; one of the few things he'd ever really been able to say. He was easily understood, though, and a very patient person. And, come to think of it, I realized, he had reddish-blonde hair. Why wasn't _he_ getting letters?

"Yeah," said Ike, "like the fact that there haven't been any rallies, or anything like that. Plus, I mean, our database plus the stuff that comes through Dad's office, Kyle…"

"Yeah?" I wondered.

"All I'm saying is," my brother shrugged, "there has been literally no uprising, or anything. No cultish activity."

"Any mention of Scott Tenorman?"

Everyone turned to look at Cartman, who had spoken. He smirked, glad to have all of the attention in the room for the time being, and lounged back into the armchair, crossing one leg over the other. "Scott Tenorman," he continued, "has been locked up for years, _but…_ there's always the chance…"

"He's under really, really heavy lock," Kenny interrupted. "When the insanity crap was going on a few years ago, he was already there, and he's not getting out."

"We sure about this?"

"Last I did the rounds at the asylum," said Karen, sternly, "Tenorman was still there."

"God, the guy must be, like, what, almost thirty by now?" Clyde pointed out. "No fuckin' way he'd still care about—"

"Oh, no, he does." And cue everyone getting whiplash for turning to look at Marjorine now. She looked a little guilty as she picked off a piece of bread crust and rolled it between her index finger and thumb. Butters himself had a few nervous ticks, but as Marjorine was able to bottle and control them… for the most part. Every now and then, she'd twist or tug her hair, or pick at her food as was happening now. When that happened, it was full indication that Butters was nervous about something. Full indication that we needed to listen.

"And you know this how?" Kenny wondered.

"Don't you dare," Cartman muttered down to Marjorine.

Marjorine pursed her lips and continued. "People at the asylum are allowed to write letters if they're 'capable' enough," she said. "Wh-when I was, y'know, when I was Chaos, back in like eighth grade, I'd do stupid stuff like go to the asylum and switch who the letters were gettin' mailed to. D-dumb Chaos stuff."

"Wait," I said before anyone else could make a move. I set my food down and leaned over my knees, trying to get Marjorine's full attention. "Wait, Marjorine, is that still true? They can write letters from the asylum?" Red and Bebe gasped. "Then of course, guys, of…"

"It's sealed with a _T,_ after all," Red added.

"Aaaaaand mark that as something so obvious I feel kinda stupid," Kenny grumbled.

"I dunno, fellas," said Marjorine. "I mean, well, maybe, but they can only write one letter at a time."

"So he sent one to someone who mass-produced it, maybe," Stan offered.

"I dunno," Marjorine went on nervously, "see… Scott always sends his letters to—"

"Okay!" Cartman interrupted, stretching his arms above his head and drawing out his word just in case Marjorine had continued speaking. "Anyone have any more food they wanna donate to me? Marjorine, that includes you."

"I wasn't finished—"

"So if you're not finished, gimme your food."

"I mean I wasn't finished talk—"

"I'm wasting away here."

"SCOTT TENORMAN ALWAYS SENDS HIS LETTERS TO LIANE CARTMAN!" Marjorine shouted.

To Eric Cartman's mother. The woman who had slept with… well, with at least half of the town, male and female alike, but most importantly in this case with Jack Tenorman, Scott's father, in order to bring that lousy loudmouthed fatass bastard into the world. Tenorman had tried to get back at Cartman before for having his parents killed, of course, but in the League, we had not heard from him in a very, very long time. To the point that we'd nearly forgotten about him altogether.

_"Weak," _Cartman muttered.

"And now I'm fucking concerned," Kenny commented.

"God-fucking-dammit."

"No! Really! I'm fucking concerned. Why the hell wouldn't you tell us that unless you're hiding something, too?" Kenny snapped across the room at Cartman. "Jesus Christ!"

"I appreciate the compliment, but I'm not Jesus, Marjorine is just being a whiny bitch, I'm still hungry, and I'm not hiding anything," Cartman lashed out.

"Because _you_ sent these, didn't you?" I accused him.

"I did not!"

"And how the heck're you still hungry?" Marjorine muttered.

"Maybe cuz I'm still starving after that year you fucked up my diet."

"Oh, that's not even close to true."

"You tried to kill me!" Cartman snapped.

"I made you eat, what, a salad a week?" Marjorine hollered back. "For God's sake, Cartman, it's not gonna kill you to have a couple healthy meals."

The fatass reeled, but relented. Marjorine shot him a scowl and went back to ripping off small pieces of her sandwich.

"…Would so, bitch," Cartman muttered.

"Okay, that does it!" Despite the attire, Butters dropped his voice to its unpracticed, natural octave (which wasn't much lower than Marjorine's glide, but it was a significant difference), set down the meal, stood and grabbed Cartman by the shoulder, free hand set to strike.

"Jesus Christ, guys, both of you, fucking cut it the fuck out!" Kenny shouted. The command echoed throughout the room. "For crying out loud! What happened to _leave shit at the door?"_

"Thought that was just for meetings," Cartman shot at Kenny.

Which did not settle well. "Fine. Then we're starting the meeting."

Clyde, Stan and I groaned, and I saw Token shoot the arguing pair a warning glance that clearly read that he still technically owned the land and could have them both kicked off if he so chose. "Groan all you want, guys, we've gotta get started," Kenny said, clapping his hands together twice. "We can bring the food, we've just gotta talk business. And you two," he added, as Butters smoothed down his skirt and turned in a huff away from Cartman, "I am honestly fucking warning you. Don't bring your own shit into this. Leave it, because like it or not, we're a team, and you're probably gonna end up a recon pair, so fucking suck it up and let's go."

We did all sort of have to admit that, given that we _had_ been on the subject prior to the ridiculous squabbling that followed, the next logical step for the evening was to move things back to the primary meeting room.

While the base had everything we could have needed and more—including a small kitchen, rooms small enough to be cramped into one long hallway but large enough to house a little bed for almost all of us (primarily used as personal changing areas), a detailed and well-organized cloak room, and that nice entrance room, the main attraction, as it were, was the enormous room in the back. It was home to Kenny, Clyde and Bebe's years worth of archives, to the computer system that I had set up long ago and that Ike and Timmy had been constantly perfecting, to our current missions and past achievements.

Though the League had grown quite large, there was still sort of an unspoken but well-understood 'main team,' and within that, we had pairs or groups of three that tended to work well together. Mysterion often worked alone, though it was not uncommon for him to pair with the Guardian Angel, now. Red Serge got his time on the field while the rest of us were away, but once us senior members returned, he tended to hang back in order to monitor field activity from his computers. Delphi was with us on rare occasions, but mainly kept her work to the side; Bebe was not often seen in the meeting hall, nor was Red.

But that night, extra chairs were added to our long rectangular table, at which Mysterion, Mosquito and Angel took turns at the head. I had led a meeting only once before, and it had been during the Cthulhu crisis. While Kenny was dead. Incidentally, while Stan was dead as well. The two had gone through Purgatory and R'lyeh before our Goth confidante Henrietta was able to bring them back, and for one meeting, I had stepped in as Mysterion.

I hadn't thought I'd ever have a reason to lead a meeting again, but it was Kenny's idea to call me to the head of the table that evening. Oddly enough, the thing that bothered me most was how far away I was sitting from my brother; I wanted to gauge his reactions to this a little better. He and I hadn't had a chance to talk about the letters, yet, not with our mother breathing down his neck about his college applications, or down mine about grad school. As brothers go, we were luckily pretty close… and when it came to League-related things, I always wanted his opinion.

Ike and Timmy were stationed down at the main control for their computer system, which was spread out over one entire wall of the huge room. Beside them sat Bebe with her notepad, and then Wendy with hers. Then Cartman, and then Token; Stan sat directly across from Ike, and on his left were Craig, then Butters, and Karen, and then Clyde. Red normally would occupy the 'guest' seat at the other end, but was now standing beside me, and in the seat closest to the head was Kenny, who gave us the floor.

"Not that much else really needs to be said," I began, "but here's the letter in question."

I had left it in the cloak room prior to the start of the meeting proper, and had a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket just in case, since I felt like I wanted to be handling that damn thing with gloves.

"Here's mine," Red added, sheepishly holding up a twin to my own. The same self-important scrawling had done up her name on the front, and no other labels could be seen other than the red wax seal with the Gothic script _T_ on the back.

I glanced down at her, where she stood on my left, and saw just how disturbed she appeared to be. All color seemed to have drained from her face, and she was not smiling, which was an odd thing for that girl. Red was always so upbeat and confident; she knew who she was and I knew that that was something Kenny loved about her, and since I'd come to know her so well, I felt distraught and almost a little responsible for her in that moment. I had more experience with things like this; I could handle it.

"I'm happy to open mine first," I offered, "if that helps. Or do you want to do this together?"

Red shook her head. "Let's just get this over with and see what they want."

"All right." I picked my head back up to address the group, and said, "Thanks for agreeing to a meeting about this, guys. It disturbed me when the letters started coming, but now that we've made the Tenorman connection, I'd say we're already pretty well on our way to sorting this out and getting on with our lives. Just in case, though…"

I turned, and pulled forward the long whiteboard on wheels we had stationed against the back wall. There were some things written over it now, in Karen's writing: there had been a heist, apparently, that she and Ike had taken care of last month… something about, based on her notes, a local group using a series of underground tunnels to loot shops and our few museums. Angel and Red Serge had, it appeared, succeeded in blocking up the tunnels and bringing the group to justice, so, no harm in erasing the board. "Karen," I checked just in case, "you done with this?"

"Oh," she said, "yeah, we've got it in the system now anyway, you can erase if you have to."

"Thanks."

I took up the eraser that lay on the shelf at the base of the board, cleared us up for a clean slate, and began what I thought was going to be the first of few, if not the only, note sessions. We had been using that whiteboard for God knows how long; ghosts of notes past could be seen underneath the constant erasings (mostly in Clyde's writing, since he bore down so hard with the markers), and there was a hole on the side on my (or, the writer's) right from where, a couple years ago, Kenny had gotten so angry about missing a clue about a serial murderer he'd thrown a _shuriken_ into the whiteboard. At the time, Karen had slapped a Post-It over the hole, but that had long since fallen off, and we hadn't cared to replace it.

Carefully, I uncapped a black felt-tipped marker and wrote at the top of the board, _LETTERS._ Below and to the left, I began bullet points. The first I wrote was _Tenorman?_ Then, after scribbling in a second black dot beside which I'd eventually continue the notes, I turned back to face the group and said, "Here we go. Let's just see how involved this whole thing is."

"Okay," said Red, inhaling deeply.

I took a survey of the others in the room prior to ripping open my wax-sealed letter. No doubt about it… whatever anyone was trying to project, I still saw anticipation. In everybody present. No one could hide it.

Secretly or not-so-secretly, we did kind of want to be on a huge mission again. Clearing the city of casual crimes was all well and good, and we had been doing our part for a long time, but things hadn't been very involved in a while. Besides… even with his Immortality gone, I knew that Kenny remained cautious. All of us did. After all, that Cult had deep ties to more of us than we had known from the start.

And there was no telling whether or not something dark and otherworldly was still out there waiting for us.

If it began with something as seemingly normal as a terrorist threat from one of our League members' half-brothers, so be it. But I got the idea I wouldn't be feeling this unwell about just anything.

With a singular rip, Red and I opened our letters.

I don't know what I was expecting. Time to stop, or some tentacled R'lyeh beast to bubble up from the ground to tell us _"Just kidding!"_ or what. Nothing in the air changed, nothing strange happened. It was nice to know that, no, there was no anthrax, or anything like that. I'd still wash my hands a few times, but this wasn't chemical warfare.

It was, though, as I had started to speculate on my own, obvious literary propaganda.

"Well?" Clyde prompted.

Another survey of the table. Anticipation still reigned, but Kenny and Stan wore mixed feelings of concern. Wendy and Bebe looked sympathetic. Cartman looked slightly disenchanted, and Marjorine was silently drumming her fingertips on the table. My brother was holding his breath.

I pulled my reading glasses out of my jeans pocket and read over the letterhead once on my own. Enormous, bolded print started it all off: _GSM,_ it read, and underneath each letter were the words for the acronym… _Ginger Separatist Movement._ I turned to write that as my second bullet point, and turned back in order to read aloud.

"Seems like the envelopes were the only things personalized," I informed the team. "Red, how does your start off?"

"There's no greeting," she said. The same was true for mine. "All it says is, _A call to all young, able-bodied Gingers and our carefully-selected red-haired brothers and sisters…"_

"Aaaaaand, _CULT,"_ said Kenny, slapping a hand down on the table. "Kyle?"

"Agreed," I groaned, writing _Cult_ underneath _GSM_ on the board. "It goes on," I read, "to say… ugh, what _is_ this, who _wrote_ this?"

"Scott Tenorman?" Marjorine offered.

"Maybe, probably, but still…"

It was so fucking flowery; so fucking showy. I felt almost embarrassed for having been afraid of the letters the day before. But the more I read, the more I could see past the flowery language and into the heart of the problem. There was a new cultist uprising, and more than just intuition led me to believe that it wasn't just about the Gingers being purist again. They were on a mission. And if they were hand-selecting letter recipients…

"No doubt about it, guys," I said, gnawing on my lower lip and shaking my head. "They're targeting us."

"Hold up," Stan said angrily. "Does it say why?"

"No," I was able to confirm, looking over the rest of the letter. "At the bottom, it's perforated, and there's a label…"

"Looks like they want us to fill out a form and send it back," Red added.

"It says, _More information to come upon your compliance,"_ I read off.

"Compliance to what?" Kenny wanted to know.

"Joining the movement, I guess," I deduced.

"What's it offering you?" asked Cartman.

"What?"

"Ech. People don't just send out rally letters without askin' for stuff." Yeah, he would know. "What're they offering you if you join?"

"Actually, yeah," Stan said. "Especially if that one guy asked you to invest, Kyle, remember that?"

"Yeah, you're right," I realized. "And it does mention something about paying an entrance fee, though it doesn't tell you how much that is."

"So," Wendy translated, "they want your compliance and your cash to join their stupid cult with no hinted benefits? Yeah, I don't think so."

"No kidding," Red and I answered at the same time.

I was starting to get a headache. Just from having opened the letter at all. But the more we were passing these speculations around, the stronger that feeling became. It wasn't a normal headache and I knew it, but I pretended that it was. Because, for fuck's sake, I'd been able to be normal for the last four years. No big uprisings, nothing too strange… everyday problems to face, ordinary ways of working through them. Headaches that would go away with Advil or an ice pack or green tea.

The lights didn't flicker or anything, but my over-stimulated mind was telling me something. Now that Red and I had opened those letters, the League was on the job. We had to say our goodbyes to any mundaneness we'd been expecting of our final summer before college graduation.

"Well, guys," said Kenny, standing in order to place himself between me and Red at the head of the table, "I think it's obvious that we've got something pretty serious and pretty damn personal on our hands, here. Time to get some investigating done."

"Kenny," said Token, "do you really think this is gonna get big? Like, to Cult extremes?"

"It's a Movement recruiting members, earning money, and doing so mostly without being noticed." He held out his hand, and I surrendered the marker to him. Kenny was better with that sort of thing, anyway. "Tenorman is most likely orchestrating something, and Cartman, we have _got_ to read those letters he's sent to your mom…"

"Goddammit," was the reply.

"But in all honesty, guys, we've got ourselves a case, here. An uprising _very clearly_ targeting two of our members? Sometimes I can't believe in coincidence," Kenny said, almost proudly. "This means somebody probably knows about us, and they're calling us out. So here's my answer."

With that, Kenny turned, drew his signature question mark underneath my scribbled notes, and then, on the blank side of the whiteboard, wrote down the date and the words, _Open Case._ "What do you say, guys?" he addressed the team, with a trademark grin. "We gonna take this one?"

"Well, I'm in," I sighed. "I just want these stupid letters to not get any worse, and I know the cops aren't gonna do a damn thing."

"I'm on board," Stan added without hesitation.

"So am I," said Karen.

"Right here," added Clyde, throwing one hand up into the air.

One by one, nods were given, affirmations were voiced, summers were sworn away.

"All right, it's settled," said Kenny, underlining _Open Case._ "Do what you can this week, boys and girls, cuz next Wednesday, it's all about recon. We got this, guys, and we're not gonna take it lightly." He grinned again, emphatically snapped the cap back on the dry-erase marker, and boasted, "The Shadow League's back in action!"

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Note:**

_South Park _is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

Kenny narrates next week! Lots of recapping and catching up in this chapter (and Kyle's my most long-winded narrator...), but next week we'll be diving right in to get the League to work. We'd been considering bringing in Tenorman and the Gingers during the first story, but it was too much... and they're not even the worst of what's coming this time around... ^^

Updates are going to be on Wednesdays again, but not at any particular time of day; I'll make a note on my profile and/or tumblr if I have to postpone. :3 (I'll also try to be less long-winded in my ANs this time haha... but will probably blog thoughts on tumblr now&then.)

Thank you so much for reading~! See you again next **Wednesday, June 27th** for chapter 2!

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	2. Ep 2: Propaganda

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kenny_

Even though it's on my mind twenty-four/seven, I can never state enough just how fucking proud I am to be Mysterion and to be a part of the Shadow League.

We've been active for years, now, and I for one know that Mysterion is not a part of me that's ever going to die. I thrive on helping people. I love to do good for the sake of those who can't help themselves or who can't even begin to understand the dangers around them.

Name it, and I'll take it on. It's what I've sworn myself to do.

So this was gonna be a summer to be proud of—I told myself that right from the get-go. None of us were seeing this as a burden. It was a job; we were signed on to it, and we were going to see it through, no matter what had to happen.

With little information about this new Ginger uprising, the best use of our week, we determined, was gathering data from any and all outside sources. Part-time jobs. Friends. Parents. Co-workers. We all advised each other to keep a wary eye on people we knew or at very least commonly associated with who could be possible other letter recipients.

Ike pre-empted his own assignment and offered to keep a sharp ear at his father's law office… particularly when filtering calls from the police station. Ike had long ago invested in a police scanner, and he had more recently figured out a way to route some Park County Police reports into a protected email that only he, Karen, and Timmy knew how to access. The guy was fucking brilliant, and while it was going to be hard losing him to the East Coast if he did go for an Ivy League school once he graduated—as I kept hearing Kyle talk about at school—I was pretty certain that our youngest member would still manage to have a hand in Shadow League affairs over the internet.

As for the rest of us, we started our investigation in more or less the same way: at our summer jobs. I, fortunately, worked everywhere. I'd gotten in good with various painting and contracting crews around town, and was generally one of the first ones called in for work. It was because I was paid cash, no questions asked, and probably also because I was younger than most of the crew, and could keep up with some of the more rigorous work. I'd gotten to a point at which I could ask for a little more money on each job, and I knew that one of these days I'd have to start looking for something that would allow me to build credit, as Karen was doing, but for now, this kind of work served and suited me just fine.

Stan, too, was in a pretty good position, at least at his father's office. There, he had access to anything and everything the geologists were working on or tracking. Then there was Token, who interned at Hell's Pass, Wendy, who may have been in the best position as an assistant at the _South Park Gazette,_ and, as weird as it was to admit, Craig. Because Craig hauled his ass out of bed at four a.m. to go typeset the teleprompter for the morning news, he sometimes knew things even before Wendy or Ike. It pissed Cartman off that Craig had gotten the job, which was once amusing but now annoying, since Cartman wanted to suck up to the news station more than anything, but Craig had the job and Craig therefore had the news. I had no clue how he did it… functioning on only a few hours of sleep, keeping up that job, and still holding steady in the League. Never would have guessed it, but the guy had pulled through.

And then, there were the Goths.

Which was precisely where Stan, Kyle and I wanted to start during one of their afternoons off. Kyle bitched and moaned a little about losing his off time and still being tired from the last couple of semesters at school, but I knew he was just coming up with excuses rather than admitting to be scared shitless about being a target of Tenorman's 'invitations'-slash-threat-letters. Plus, he was just as excited as the rest of us to be back on a job.

The Shadow League, even just the mere mention of it, was enough to get any of us out of a funk, or halt friendly feuds. Sure, there was some strain going on at the moment, but I was confident that would smooth out. And I had a feeling that whatever the three of us picked up from the Goths that early afternoon would set us on our way to being right back out on the field and getting to the bottom of this summer threat.

The past few years had been almost alarmingly kind to the Goths, to the point that the three were thriving. In the June preceding my sophomore year at CSU, Henrietta—our still oft-reliable resource for all things even vaguely otherworldly—and her two eternal dark companions had opened up an establishment that both suited their needs (coffee and sparse light) and brought in enough revenue to keep them functioning. Henrietta herself had, in high school, come into a considerable amount of money following the death of her adopted alien brother, Bradley, and was the one to get the place started, though it was her 'friend' with a splash of red in his mottled black hair who had somehow earned himself an associate's degree in business in order to keep the place thriving.

And I had to admit, despite the dreary atmosphere and the hellish art that constantly oozed on the industrial walls, I liked it. They called the place The Tenth Circle, and it was, by listing, an Anti-Collective: of art, music, and—of course—coffee. Bands of the batcave variety played the small stage set up in an isolated room off to the left of the entrance, and art shows were held for the morbidly-inclined. The Goths' two sacrifices for the place were the Colorado smoking ban and the need to hire staff on an as-needed basis. Luckily, one of the selected few who could work whenever she needed to was my sister, who'd give up her normally colorful wardrobe for blacks and greys a couple times a week so that the Goths wouldn't have to rise with the sun in order to please people.

There was a fittingly circular coffee bar on the far back wall of the main room, and arranged around under low-lit (and low-hanging) black iron chandeliers were a motley assortment of either Victorian or modern (and twisted) chairs, sofas, and chaise lounges. For disliking people so much, the Goths sure took care of them well. Which was good; it kept the place going.

The three lived together in the doubly dark loft above the establishment, as well, which was beyond convenient for us in the League. I'd been working with the Goths for the past few years still, tracking down and destroying anything and everything from or reminiscent of R'lyeh, which made the Cthulhu nightmare just that much more buried, to me.

I was, though, disturbed that the artist Wilcox—now two years out of prison for having had a hand in Cthulhu Cult affairs—was sometimes showcased at The Tenth Circle, but the art no longer resembled the Old Ones.

Nowadays, he painted sins.

Sins; pestilence; decay—all sorts of fantastic representations of the kind of Hell only Dante Alighieri once had known.

Which, Goddammit, just happened to, once again, be art relevant to our interests.

When I met up with Stan and Kyle the Thursday afternoon that truly changed the course of our final college summer break, the former had his guitar case beside him, and the instrument itself in his lap. The two sat facing each other in large, sickly gold chairs on either side of a small, circular chess table, and Kyle was giving passing positive feedback to Stan's quiet progression of chords.

_Damn,_ I thought: Stan was getting really serious about that guitar. To the point that, yeah, to be honest, I was getting a little nervous about how long those guys were going to hold an interest in continuing with the League.

But I told myself not to worry. I had them for the summer, and that was all we needed to focus on for now. I waved upon walking in, and Kyle, angled toward the door, waved back, prompting Stan to turn and do so as well. Stan started in on the opening riff for _Bela Lugosi's Dead_ as Henrietta crossed to bring two bowls of some coffee concoction or another to the two, and I strode up to the counter, repeating my order in my head since I knew that Henrietta's companions had absolutely no tolerance for the _oh, I need to take my time and look at the menu_ crowd. According to Karen, an indecisive customer once got hosed out of the store. I have no option but to believe her, and only wish I could have seen it happen.

The Goth who had been in my grade in school, the nefarious owner with no known name, was working the register, and had his scowl ready as I approached. His jaw was busy biting down on a mint or six as his indoor replacement for his preferred clove or cigarette, so I wasn't surprised that he didn't greet me. "Black eye," I ordered, already digging cash out of my jeans pocket. "The drink, dude, don't hit my face."

"I was gonna waive your charge," said the Goth, dressed, that day, in decidedly Edwardian pinstripes and a women's cloche that still did nothing to hide some of the red accent to his jagged hair, "but I'm tempted to charge you for the stupid joke."

"Waive my charge?" I wondered, nonetheless slipping two bucks in the tip jar (a modified bat sculpture whose head had been severed; the body had been theatrically painted to show that it was 'bleeding,' complete with entrails that nobody wanted to see and therefore _had_ to put money in the damn jar if they didn't want the taste of their coffee spoiled by painted bat guts—the head appeared in a different part of the shop on any given day, and it wasn't much of a secret that they kept a security camera in there).

The Goth rolled his eyes. "I don't always do favors, but your girlfriend gave me a deal on this—" he flicked at the collar of the grey pinstripe vest he was wearing over a long-sleeved black collared shirt— "so I said I'd give you guys your next couple drinks."

"Well, thanks," I said, trying not to grin too broadly, lest he change his mind.

"Whatever."

I turned away from him, knowing that he was done with the conversation, and gave Henrietta the wave I knew she never wanted but that I always gave her anyway, just as a gesture of good faith. She didn't scowl, which was enough of an acknowledgement that we were as close to 'friends' as anyone could really get to the Goths (other than Stan, who had run in their circle once back in elementary school and whom they still more or less respected, and Craig, who had dated Henrietta for a little while and who still rolled with the Goths on occasion).

When I moved to head back over to the guys, though, an enormous oil painting on the exposed brick wall facing the barista station not only caught my eye but stalled my breath and made me trip a little. The Goths had hung some interesting shit in their shop before (the 'Inner Beauty' theme of their inaugural year came to mind, with displays of x-rayed bone diseases and pictures nobody wants to see of what your intestinal tract looks like), but this was… actually, it was kind of breathtaking.

In a very unsettling way.

The painting must have been four feet by six feet or so; I mean, it was huge… and just from a glance, I could tell that I was looking at the beginning of a journey. It felt familiar to me, and that sent a chill down my spine. When I saw the title of the piece, on a plaque to its left, I understood why.

It was called _Limbo._ It tamed in comparison to the expected horrors of the paintings of sins that hung throughout the rest of the shop, but I just plain did not like this piece. It disturbed me, because I had seen Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven before. It had been four full, wonderful years since the last time I died, and I knew that the next time death came for me it would be the very end. So I didn't like chances, and I hated reminders.

But I was able to brush it off, and join my friends at the chess table, selecting the seat on Stan's left, putting my back to the service counter. "Hey, dudes," I said.

"Hey, Kenny," Kyle greeted me. "Sorry, dude, I've actually gotta run to the bathroom. Can you guys hold off on the conversation till I get back?"

"Can't think without coffee anyway, man, go for it," I told him.

"Be right back." Kyle abandoned his chair and drummed the fingers of his right hand on Stan's left shoulder as he walked past to head into the other room toward the hidden facilities (a feature that drove some customers crazy—I think it was the Goths' way of filtering clientele).

Stan peered around the back of his chair to make sure Kyle had gone, then turned to me and said, "Hey, man, real quick, how's this sound?" He then proceeded to play a few gliding, plucked chords, his full focus on the guitar, to make sure his fingers were doing what he wanted them to do.

"Catchy," I gave him once he looked at me for approval. "You writing your husband a song?"

"Dude, shut the fuck up," Stan sneered at me, picking a rook up off of the chess table and chucking it at me. The ex-quarterback still had good aim: hit me right on the collarbone, and I saw him let out a silent guilty laugh, since he knew it might've bruised. Then again, ever since I'd rid myself of my Immortality, I've been kind of quick to bruise. If that was the worst of the after-effects, though… whatever. I'd take it. No big deal at all. I'd rather bruise dark for a week than get reborn every other fucking day. "You can't tell Kyle you heard that, by the way," Stan added.

I smirked almost involuntarily. "Oh, no?"

"Dude, please."

I grinned and chucked the rook back at him. "Whatever, man, I won't."

"But it sounded good?" Stan double-checked with me while he set the rook back on the table.

"Like I said, dude, it's catchy," I assured him.

"Well… thanks." Stan flashed a nervous smile and tucked his guitar away into its case so that he could switch gears. He was getting pretty serious about his music, yeah, but I knew damn well that he didn't let it take priority over certain other things. Luckily, the League was still one of them. And I couldn't imagine taking on a new mission without any single member of my current team.

Or our liaisons. Henrietta walked over at that point with my black eye, and rolled her eyes at Stan. "You still doing your minstrel thing?" he asked.

"Yup," Stan affirmed, picking up his own coffee for another sip. "Don't worry," he added, "my lyrics are all nice and conformist."

"Whatever. I'm sure you guys'll let me know when you need advice or something."

"Yeah, give it a few," I said. "Thanks for the coffee."

"Well, that's why you're here."

"World-class service, man," I joked to Stan after Henrietta had gone.

"It's the only reason I keep coming back," he laughed in return.

"Hey, it got five outta five in the _Gazette."_

"Okay, dude, number one, it's the _Gazette,_ and look at the other options," Stan chided. "Number two, who wrote the article?"

"Uh, Wendy?"

"There we go."

"Whatev," I shrugged. "Some people hate it, but all the better for us."

"Which is probably why she sprung for the fifth star," Stan laughed.

Further irony had to do with the fact that Wendy and Marjorine still favored Tweak Bros.' over Tenth Circle, but Wendy's review—as part of her summer job last year—had at one point drawn in plenty of business… only to see trickled repeat customers. Which was hilarious. I loved watching Karen's female classmates (and I could end the sentence there but I won't) walk in and get all weirded out by so much as the dark lighting. Funnier still was the fact that even the hipsters rarely gave the place the time of day. Tenth Circle really was a place of its own. Though I did have to wonder just how much of what the Goths were able to do came from Bradley's weird alien life insurance. Which did add a weird vibe to the place, but once again: whatever. The place served its purposes, and well.

Henrietta had no sooner left than Kyle returned, and after issuing my obligatory, _'what the fuck took you so long?'_ I admitted to needing a few minutes before we got started.

Despite sharing an apartment with those guys, between classes, studying, part-time jobs and respective dates, I really only got to hang out with them in the summer now, so I'd take these shoot the shit moments while I could. I had a feeling that whatever the fuck this emerging threat was all about might give us a run, but at least we'd all be together. That was something.

Once I was a few sips into my drink, the time for small talk was over, and we drilled ourselves to get down to business. Kyle and I started up a mindless game of fake chess on the table to give ourselves something to do, while Stan played note-taker, jotting down anything important we might touch upon in a memo pad he used for League purposes. We all had notebooks like that, with certain words coded using a system Wendy and Bebe had developed together our senior year of high school, so that only the few of us would be able to make sense of each other's notes.

"So, hey," said Kyle, moving his white bishop three diagonal squares toward my black queen, "you get a chance to really check out Wilcox's art yet?"

"Ugh, yeah," I said. I moved a pawn in front of my queen to avoid capture. "Sins and stuff, right? I kinda glanced. They're nasty."

"And possibly revealing." Kyle frowned down at the chess board, blew air out through his lips, then leapt his knight over three of my pawns to the other side of the board, to a black space beside my rook, and said, "King me."

"Dude," I said, "fuck you, that's checkers."

"Same board, same rules."

"Penalty," said Stan, after mimicking the sound of a score-board buzzer. "Kenny wins by default."

"Woo_hoo!"_ I exclaimed. "What do I win?"

"A trip to Disneyland."

_"Ssh!"_ Kyle hushed him, smacking his knee with a hard backhand. "If the Goths hear you utter the _D-_word in here, they'll come pour hot coffee in your lap."

"Ick. Good call. I said nothing."

Kyle gave his boyfriend a smirk and patted his knee, then shifted focus to address us both as he said, "But can we get back to serious time? I feel like these paintings might be able to help us. I fucking hate looking at them, but even just the titles seem relevant or revealing, dude. Plus, I mean, look at who made them."

"Well, okay," I said, leaning forward onto my knees. "What do we know so far? We get that it's Tenorman sending this propaganda shit out and that he's really going overboard on this 'red' this-and-that theme. I mean, guys, it just started, but my girlfriend's already at this point where she's kinda wanting me to call her 'Rebecca.' I'm her fucking boyfriend, and this shit is making her not want to be 'Red' even to _me."_

"Ouch," said Stan. "Sorry, dude."

"Yeah, well," I said, "she's scared."

"No kidding. It's disturbing seeing this crap everywhere," Kyle admitted.

"Everywhere?" I wondered.

Stan nodded. "Did you get Craig's text, man? He and Clyde've been seeing posters."

"Posters?" I coughed into my drink.

"Down on Eighth Street," Stan said. "They took 'em down, but I guess it was something about _'Paint The Town Red,'_ or some shit like that. I'm sure Clyde's filed one of 'em already."

"Ugh."

"Yeah," said Kyle. "Oh, and get _this."_ He dug into the pocket of his jeans and drew out a folded slip of contact paper, red in color—go figure—and thin in shape. "Ike got this in the mail today. _Ike._ Because he's my brother."

He offered it over to me, and as I unfolded it, Kyle said, "It's a ticket."

Indeed it was. Depression-era poster script proclaimed that it was an _Admit One_ waiver, though little other information was given. Other than a name. We got ourselves a name.

"Holder is granted full access during open hours," I read off. "Intended for holder—Broflovski—only. Courtesy of Infernal Majestic Management, and your ringleaders, Red Devil/Red Hair."

"It's a carnival," said Stan, tapping his thick black artist's pen onto the open page of his notebook.

"Ugh," I remarked again, scanning the ticket for more clues, "of course it is. Tenorman's been hooked on that fucking theme since Cartman…"

"Yeeeeah," Stan and Kyle groaned out simultaneously.

It was true: he'd been obsessed with the carnival idea since Cartman had Scott Tenorman's parents (never mind that they shared a father, not that the former knew that at the time) ground up into chili at a carnival he had devised at only eight years old. Almost thirteen years later, Tenorman was still on it, trying to get back at Cartman in whatever way he could. It had taken him a long time, but he was finally, very specifically, targeting the whole League, of which the Coon was a cornerstone. And he just had to target us now… now that we were only around for the summer, and therefore had very limited time in our hometown to do a damn thing about it.

"We should've called this," I said, disappointed in how we kind of had let the Tenorman subject go in recent years. "I mean, at least Tenorman's predictable… we can take care of this in…"

"Yeah, wouldn't really count on that," Stan said dourly.

"Why, what's up?"

"Ready to hear something disturbing?" Stan flipped through his notebook to another page, and turned it to show me a list. Didn't even matter to me at first glance what the list was, since everything was crossed out. Over in the corner, Stan's best chickenscratch read in enormous letters, _FUCK._ So that wasn't good. "None of the fairgrounds around here are getting set up for anything. I already cross-checked with the Mayor and the parks crews. Nobody's heard anything."

"He's already gone underground once," Kyle pointed out. "I don't know if he'd do it again… I mean, it's been about ten years since the last time, but I'm thinking recon missions are a good ideas. At least in pairs, if not groups."

"Mmhmm," I agreed. I glanced at Ike's ticket again, and said, "So… this Red Devil/Red Hair thing. He's got a partner. This looks like some Barnum and Bailey shit."

"That's what Ike and I thought, too," Kyle nodded, "when he first opened that up. But, I mean, okay, the art in here. I'm just gonna go ahead and come back around to that. Because, honestly, dude. Limbo? Sins? Wilcox had the Cthulhu thing before. We should probably talk to him again. Or through the Goths, at least."

"Yeah, I'll get the Goths talking once we start recon," I assured him. "I've tried to fuckin' talk to Wilcox before, but man, he's unreachable. And when he isn't, he's vague."

"He's insane," Stan pointed out.

"I mean, that, too."

"Which we can't rule out as something helpful, in this case," Kyle sighed.

"All right," said Stan, jotting down a quick note. "So, so far, we've got GSM propaganda, an obsession with the color red, a Carnival with invites but no location, and weird sin paintings. Done by the crazy Wilcox guy whose whole family had to deal with Cthulhu spasms and shit."

"And Tenor—" Kyle started, then groaned and buried his head in his hands. "Hold up. Guys, are we stupid? Have we even _checked_ with the asylum to make sure he's still there?"

"Karen's on it today," I assured him.

"Okay, good," Kyle sighed.

At that point, we had to shift back to basic conversation, as a small crew walked in with what could only be a large frame. The three men carrying it looked exhausted under the brims of their white baseball caps; the stitching on their denim over-shirts made them out to be gallery and archive movers. There was a woman, similarly exhausted but wearing a colorful dress and enormous jewelry (clearly setting her apart as not a part of our humble South Park mountain society), heading the team and holding a clipboard. I wondered if she might be Wilcox's wife for a second before realizing that the last time that man had physical contact with anyone it was probably his parole officer who removed his handcuffs two years ago. I went with benefactor or possible relative, since this whole gallery thing must have been something of curatorial interest.

I exchanged a quick glance and nod with Kyle, just to let him know that I agreed with his theory that the paintings were important. I mean, as it had been pointed out, this was Wilcox we were dealing with, here. I wasn't going to discount art or artifacts for a second; it had been a museum visit that had—in a rare illegal move for me—granted me and Henrietta access to a _Necronomicon_ back in eighth grade.

They would probably hate me for saying this, but thank God for the Goths. Sometimes their help came with a hefty price, but at least the strange information they seemed to always have access to would in some way find its way to the League when we needed it. The paintings were no exception. Talk about hiding in plain sight. The guys and I frequented this place like a second or third home, and as far as anyone else in town could tell, it was just because the coffee was better than Tweak Bros.' or Harbucks.

The woman with the clipboard spoke for a moment with the red-haired Goth at the circular counter, and all three of us tried to listen in. All I caught was, "latest work" something or other, and, "by June sixth," blah, blah, "invoice" something.

Important as it was to our current mission, and as much as I appreciate what I've discovered through certain gallery settings in the past, art talk does kinda bore me. Stan and Kyle were no bigger patrons than I was, either (Stan's actually probably worse), so hopefully between all three of us we might have been able to make out a full sentence. Not that I wouldn't be speaking to the Goths soon enough anyway, but the more the League could lap up info first hand, the better.

The Goth sent the woman and crew over toward where we were sitting, prompting a brusque, "Pardon us, boys," from the woman. Upon closer glance, I noticed that there was no way she could have any kind of relation to Wilcox, and was far too old to be a wife or anything. A couple wisps of silver hair fell out from a black scarf around her head, and her face closely resembled that of a bulldog—I mean, this lady had jowls. Kind of frightening, actually.

But we smiled at her and let the crew pass to hang up a painting, along with a new plaque. They moved quickly, pretty clearly just wanting to get their job done and be on their way. The woman hurried them out once the painting was up on the wall, then crossed to have the Goth sign something on a clipboard. She took her overdramatic leave a moment later, and we were left with no choice but to take in Wilcox's latest abomination on canvas.

Kyle took one look at the painting and blanched. It was a dismal, Escher-like work done in oil: a hall of mirrors in dank greys and inky black, save for one off-centered red mirror that lay shattered in pieces. Red shards, I noticed, could be spotted here and there elsewhere in the painting, drawing the eye in a mad sequence across the canvas.

It was titled, _Wrath._

When Kyle shuddered at the artwork, Stan noticed, and held a hand out to him. Kyle took hold right away, and Stan held Kyle's hand against his own knee, allowing Kyle to cling on with, I noticed, the desperation—or at least intensity—of a child gripping onto a precious item. Kyle let out a sigh as he tried to dispel nerves, and finally looked away from the painting.

My breath caught a bit when the two exchanged a little smile; I wanted, more than anything right then and there, to run over to Red's shop and not let her out of my sight until this situation was over. But, at the same time, I knew that we had to play things just as normally as possible. This, whatever 'this' was, was nothing like the difficulty with Cthulhu and the Cult. That had been years in the making, and I had been doing my research in the meantime.

This thing had snuck up on us in the middle of a nice, normal, peaceful time. Which may or may not have been intentional. It seemed rather glaringly incoincidental that the Carnival that Scott Tenorman was clearly setting up happened to be coming to town just as Wilcox was hanging these paintings. At least the Goths were on our side.

I'd be doling out a lot of cigarettes in exchange for information, here, pretty soon. Either that or playing errand boy and talking up their coffee back at the shops in Fort Collins. I didn't mind running them errands, so long as they were the ones providing us with the right kinds of nightmares for our interpretation.

Ugh. Like I'd ever thought I'd want to say that.

"Dude, I'm sorry," said Kyle, "I think I'm kinda done. I wanna get out of here."

"It's all good," I told him. "I kinda wanted to go see Red anyway."

"Good call," Kyle told me with a slight smile. "Sorry, guys, I just… doesn't this seem like it's all happening really fast?"

"Hey, at least we've got safety in numbers," Stan pointed out. "Everyone's on the lookout for things."

I nodded. "I'm pretty confident we can figure out just what the hell's going on before it can get too out of hand."

We finished our respective drinks in silence and bussed our cups and saucers away, knowing that the Goths would have our heads before they had to clean up anything themselves. There were once even stand-up signs on the tables in the red-haired one's writing, demanding, _BUS YOUR OWN DAMN DISHES,_ but I think the mayor got on their asses about that or something, and now it was simply understood.

"Let us know when you hear from Karen," Kyle requested, as Stan slipped back to the table to grab his guitar. "It'll be helpful once we know how and if Tenorman is actually on the move."

"You got it," I agreed. "If you don't hear from her yourself, I'll make sure you get her memos."

"Thanks, man." Kyle sighed and set his dishes down onto the tray at the end of the service counter. He gnawed at his lower lip a little, and looked the _Limbo_ painting over once before giving into a shiver. "Sorry I'm being kinda weird about this. It's, um…"

"Nah, dude, I understand," I said. "Trust me," I added with a slight laugh. "I know what it's like to not understand why people are after you."

"Well," Kyle conceded, "we'll keep digging and find something soon, right?"

"That's the plan."

Stan had returned by this point, asking, "All set?"

"Yeah, you guys head out," I said, waving them off. "I'm gonna grab somethin' for me and Red and leave kinda soon, too, but go enjoy your day. Seriously." The look that the three of us exchanged at that point was one we'd shared before:

_While you can._

There was a trick to balancing our everyday lives with our League activities. Obviously, being out of town and away at college had helped us budget our time a little more easily, but there was one fact that never faded. Even when we went about life as usual, we were more or less on the job. I could take Red out to the movies or we could just be wandering around on any of our dates, and some of my thoughts would still be turned toward whatever the current mission was. Red understood that; it actually helped a great deal that those of us who did have significant others all dated people who were in the know… I mean, just look at Bebe. She got so interested in what Clyde did that she wanted her own alter ego for the aid she provided in intelligence and file control.

So we understood. Stan and Kyle could go on their way, but it was pretty clear that they'd both be waiting to hear more… waiting to hear what Karen learned at the asylum, waiting to hear the events of everyone's days, waiting for a clue to come right up in front of them. I'd be doing more or less the same.

Kyle shot a disdainful glance back at the _Wrath_ painting before turning fully to leave, then slid his right hand into Stan's left; the two of them exited the building talking away about their day plans, both trying to leave the subject of the paintings and the Carnival alone until our next meeting.

"Your psychic friend's not a big fan of the art, huh?" Henrietta asked me from her spot at the barista station.

"Not particularly, no." I slid my mug over the counter for her, and the Goth glared at it for a second, as if to make it wash itself so that she wouldn't fuck up her expertly-polished fingernails. Chicks. Doesn't matter if they bite 'em or paint 'em, chicks are always fucking preoccupied with their nails. I don't get it.

"And he's not psychic, I don't think," I added, getting my mind back on how Kyle really got squeamish over those paintings. Kyle does get sick and squeamish over things (particularly bodily fluids and exposed organs), but I would have thought that, given how accepting he'd been of the R'lyeh-related things, these paintings would have just been useful—though dark—pieces of art. "Not anymore, anyway."

Henrietta snorted. "You of all people shouldn't make assumptions, panty boy."

"Yeah, definitely thought that nickname died with Cthulhu," I muttered.

"Nope."

"Clearly. Anyway, can you, like… tell?" I wondered. "About Kyle?"

"You can't?" Henrietta smirked (which was fucking creepy, since her lips hardly ever lifted over a flat line), clearly glad to have a chance to mock me. "I have to straighten the fucking paintings every time he leaves." She pointed one ring-armored index finger to a spot on the wall behind me.

The _Limbo_ painting I had noticed earlier was indeed askew on its hook. It hadn't been like that earlier, and I hadn't heard anyone or anything knock back into it. Wilcox certainly would not have put his own art at an angle, eccentric as the guy was. "Huh," I commented. A second glance told me that the painting had been hung up with very heavy-duty wire; the hook hadn't just been screwed into the wall, it had been screwed and triple-bolted, the frame then doubly secured by the wire. Two of the bolts had fallen to the floor.

Yeah, nobody just knocked into that.

"We had two lights burst last time, too," Henrietta said. "If he's repressing it or just not noticing or whatever, tell him to cut it out, accept it's not gone, and that he owes us two fucking light bulbs. Sixty-watt."

"I'll come fix your lights," I offered.

"No way. He broke, he buys."

"Look, I'll talk to Kyle and make him pay eventually," I said more strongly, "but for right now, if he learns he's been doing things like that, it'll drive him crazy. I'll fix your lights and let him know."

"Fine." Henrietta didn't look impressed. Then again, she rarely did. "But it's not a good idea to coddle psychics."

"Okay, Henrietta, I get it. And I'm not coddling, that's Stan's job."

"Whatever."

Henrietta poured out my pre-emptive coffee to go, and then (nice and grudgingly) another for Red after I flashed a signal of a grin. (I can only 'coddle' one redhead at a time, and it ain't Kyle.) Once the Goth had set me up with my coffees and assured me that Red's was vanilla-infused, she leaned over the counter and took a glance around at the shop. There were a few patrons around, still, so we had to resort to our usual coded messages through well-intentioned and wildly fake flirting.

"By the way," Henrietta said on a low tone. "Sixth of June, we're doing an art opening. Gallery thing."

"For Wilcox?" I guessed.

"Yup."

"Good luck with that."

"You guys should come," she pressed.

I laughed, paid, and took a sip of my coffee. "Artsy stuff's not really our thing, doll," I told her in my _no-shit-Sherlock_ tone.

Henrietta just narrowed her eyes at me. "You guys," she said firmly, "should come."

Oh. _Oh._ "Eh," I said, "we'll think about it. Especially," I added with a half-grin, "if you come play poker with us this week."

_"Poker,"_ she repeated doubtfully. Her raven elegance was disrupted by a seasick expression.

"Yep," I said, picking up my two drinks before her insides could capsize. "Poker."

Henrietta caught my bluff, but was still very judgmental of my horrible lies. "I guess," was her eventual, mostly hoarse, answer.

"Take it easy," I winked at her. She didn't care about my fake flirting, but she was keyed onto the two bucks I slid into that stupid bat container on the counter.

"Oh, by the way," Henrietta added once the bills were in the bat. "If you stop by later, I might have a book for you to borrow."

"I'll use the back entrance so I don't attract customers," I laughed. Henrietta waved me off and turned back to grab a bottle of black nail polish on the counter behind her, to give herself a touch-up.

She knew I meant the window. Time-tested entrance; to the point that the Goths knew well enough to take off the screens when their upstairs flat turned into their somber little clove and poetry circle. Those guys liked helping out, but they'd never admit it. I didn't try to make them, either… as long as we kept up this working partnership, things would run smoothly for all of us.

With an information trade-off pretty much set in stone between me and Henrietta, I made my way out of Tenth Circle, maneuvering around a small group of high schoolers who were sure to be surprised when they got a taste of the Goths' signature 'service,' and continued down the street on my way to stop in to see my girlfriend.

She hadn't changed jobs since junior year of high school, and for good reason: she loved her job. The only thing that would make her leave was an internship she had her eye on, through the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City… I'd miss her if she took it (it'd be a full year, right after we graduated), but I was so fucking proud of her, I'd support anything she decided to do. She had a good eye for design, and had brought that into the League, helping us streamline uniforms, and working with Token and Wendy on keeping us lightly and comfortably armored under our regular gear.

Such a fucking inspiration. I'll go ahead and sound lame for a few seconds to say that I really am pretty damn lucky and incredibly happy that I fell in love with her. And that she loves me, cursed history and all.

I only had to glance around the shop a couple of times before I saw Red, who smiled and sent a satisfied-looking customer on her way to the back register before turning to speak with a woman I recognized as my girlfriend's boss. Red worked for some high-end people, and had made an impression over the past few years. While I was paid pretty much on an honor system that, in all fairness, did get better with time, Red had been doing the hourly wage thing since her early high school days at Harbucks. Her fashion and business double major impressed her boss and manager enough for them to have been jacking her wage up every time she came home, which was promising for a number of reasons.

But as proud as I was of that girl for her hard work, as pleased as I was to see her boss complimenting her on jobs well done… yeah, okay, there was still a part of me that walked in and could only think of how fucking sexy the skirt she was wearing that day looked on her. One of those greyish-greenish crinkly-ruffly things, tiered down to her knees but hugging at her thin hips—something from the store; a Christmas present from the boss, actually, if I was thinking of the right skirt. I dunno; Red has a lot of hot skirts. I loved the thick belt cinched around her waist, I loved the strappy black heels that let Red _almost_ pass for slightly tall, I loved the way her deep red hair streamed like a waterfall down to the small of her back.

And I _loved_ the pretty smile she flashed over her shoulder at me, and the wave that followed, once her boss pointed out that I was standing in the doorway. I tried pretty damn hard to look as respectable as I could when I walked into that store. Red had helped, and Karen was developing a pretty keen eye for fashion from her, but I mean, sometimes I did stop in between jobs. Fuck, I stopped in whenever I could. Just to see Red working on something that made her happy.

Boss-lady took her leave, and when that lone customer passed by me through the doors, Red and I were pretty much the only ones on the floor, aside from the other couple of girls at work hanging clothes or bank-facing the money in the registers. So Red turned on her skinny heel and walked briskly up to me, exclaiming, "Hey, sweetie!"

"Hey, babe," I greeted her in return.

We shared a quick kiss before she tugged at my shirt, saying, "Don't just stand in the doorway, Kenny, c'm'ere."

"Yeah, sure." I followed her over to a service counter off to the left of the door, which conveniently had a shelf at around my elbow height for me to place the two hot drinks. "Coffee?"

"Always! Thanks, Kenny," my girlfriend grinned up at me, "you always have the best timing with this stuff."

"It's my damsel in distress radar," I quipped, picking my own coffee back up. "I'm here for all your caffeine emergencies."

"Don't be stupid," she scolded, lovingly smacking my arm. "When do you get off work tonight?"

"Like, eight," I lamented.

Red pouted and picked up her coffee. "Can you come over for dinner tomorrow, though?" she wondered. "My mom's dying to do a big family thing. Karen, too. And Ike can come if he wants."

"Your parents are way too nice to us, baby," I said, grinning nonetheless. "Tell me if your dad wants me to, like… I dunno, mow the lawn or re-shingle your garage or something."

"Five years, sweetie," Red reminded me with a gorgeous, proud smile. Her lips, polished a shimmering magenta, curved into the perfect little upward arch. "You're _family._ Lawn mowing is for neighbor kids and people who owe favors. Ah—" she stopped me before I could start insisting that I _did_ owe favors. Red pressed one index finger over my lips, then tapped it there twice. "Family."

I kissed her fingertip, and then we both went back to our coffee. "Love you," I got in for good measure. "And yeah, I should be able to do dinner tomorrow, and I'll check with my sister."

"If _something else_ comes up, though," Red said, stressing her words just enough, "let me know. We can always re-schedule."

"I'd hate to have to," I said honestly. "But thanks."

Red simply smiled, and sidled up to me; as she pressed into my side, I wrapped my arm around her, keeping her planted right there. When she tilted her head to rest lightly on my chest, I grinned and kissed the top of her head. Thankfully, she had the down time, so the two of us were able to enjoy just a little quiet time to ourselves.

With the League getting up and active again, my home was going to become a working base for the summer, with everyone in and out at any given time… which of course was fine by me, I loved being so involved as Mysterion that I was able to live and work in the same place, but at the same time I'd look forward just as much to the times I'd hopefully get to spend at Red's. Her parents were incredible people, and insisted that Karen and I, as Red had just been stressing, were as good as family.

Someday, I'd started thinking, I was going to make that official. I told myself to wait till after Clyde and Bebe got hitched; Red would be all the more surprised if I waited till then. But I really was looking toward the future now… for me, for Karen, for Red, for wherever we'd be two, five, ten years from now. I wanted to take it all on; anything that came our way.

So it all had to start with me keeping her safe from these strange extremists. Honestly, I couldn't help thinking, the sooner the GSM actually _attacked,_ the better. I'd talk with Red about that later.

For now, while we were on our own, I leaned in close to say, "Hey, I'm gonna be working, but if anything comes up, babe, anything at all, you call me and let me know, okay?"

"Sure thing, Kenny," Red smiled. She looked so calm and relaxed… but her eyes showed fear. "Really, sweetie, thank you."

We spoke a little more, primarily about what her mother's 'big family plans' could possibly mean, and then I relinquished her back to the world of fashion retail. After thanking me for the coffee, Red tugged me down for a sugary kiss. I melted against her, and promised again to be only a call away for the remainder of the afternoon and evening.

I could not stress enough that I'd always be there. Whenever she needed me. Kenny or Mysterion. I'm both… and she deserves both.

– – –

I had time to kill between checking in on Red and my evening job, so I figured I'd check around town to see if any of that postering Stan had mentioned was going on again, but fell short. It was looking like a boring couple of hours for me, unless or until I heard anything from Karen.

No texts yet.

What Henrietta had said before I'd left the coffee shop bothered me, though, and in what I suppose I could call a moment of last-minute panic, not long before my shift was set to start, I dug out my phone and texted Kyle. If he was experiencing that psychic quirk again, and not telling the rest of us in the League, that could be a problem. Because fuck if that hadn't been one of the most useful abilities on the team when he'd first figured out exactly what he could do.

_You still in town?_ I asked, quick and simple.

I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath until I got a response almost half a minute later: _Yeah, something come up?_

_ Sorta. Where you at?_

_ I don't answer slang._

Asshole. _WHERE ARE YOU then,_ I pounded out.

_Home Depot._ Of course they were at Home Depot. Of course they were.

_Gotta ask you something._ Autocorrect saved my ass on that one, I usually just typed out _sth._

_Can't you text it?_

_ No._

A few more seconds. _Oh._

I ran through my mental map of the town in my head, placing my job in relation to where those guys were, and thank God: _My gig's near there, I'll meet you._

Kyle sent back no objection, and I knew he and Stan could kill time like crazy in Home Depot the way my girlfriend could waste time at Banana Republic. Almost to the point that Stan's trying out tools in their most practical ways. Almost. Let's just say that if we were a fucking major league sports team, we'd have one guaranteed sponsor.

I picked up my pace, double-checking my time, and made it to the enormous home improvement store without any interruption. I didn't even have to text or search aisles, since I was pretty sure I knew where those guys would be. Oddly enough, they weren't, meaning they must have been there for a while.

The place in question was the hardware service desk, behind which was standing a camera-ready model of a blonde guy whose overly-optimistic attitude and bright white smile made it hard for me to believe that he was an actual human being sometimes. Gary Harrison, middle son of South Park's only Mormon family, had just returned from his two-year mission in fuck-all-if-I-knew, and I had a feeling that if he were less serious about his job he'd be slacking like the rest of us and texting his girlfriend behind that counter.

But, no, the guy was so annoyingly responsible, he was alphabetizing paint strips when I walked up. "Well, look who's here!" he greeted me with that blinding stretch of teeth. "Kenny McCormick, how are ya? Gosh, I haven't seen you since high school graduation!"

"Hey, I'm fine, dude, you?"

"Oh, I'm fine, thanks, but darn if it isn't a little weird being back in town," Gary admitted with a minor shrug. "Hey, ran into Stan and Kyle earlier, and—"

"Yeah, I was about to ask you about them," I said, "like, where they booked it off to."

"I think just down by the grills," Gary told me, pointing me off to my right. "Stan said something about his dad needing a gas tank."

"Thanks, man." And that about did it for any conversation I'd ever really had with Gary. I knew he and Stan were friends, and fuck if I didn't owe his family a lot for really taking to Karen thanks to her schooling in Salt Lake City with Gary's sisters, Jenny and Amanda, but even when Karen had been dating the younger brother, David, I hadn't had all that much of a friendship with the guy.

But, as I would come to find out, it was a good thing were on good terms. Gary and the League, I mean.

A very, very good thing.

I made it to the grills and discovered nothing, only to feel my cell phone buzz with a new text message: _We're checking out. Did you need something or…?_

Rather than answer Kyle, I just did a 180 and made my way back toward the front of the store to the self check-out line, where Stan was swearing at the machine and Kyle was patting his shoulder, telling him something… probably along the lines of needing more patience with the self check-out. "Just fucking take humans right out of the equation all over the place, why don't we," Stan was muttering when I walked up. "Dude, did you know they outsource drive-thru windows? Fucking _drive-thrus."_

"They've been doing that for years," Kyle noted.

"Which is one of the reasons I don't eat fast food anymore."

"I know, Stan, I proof-read that essay. Seven years ago."

"Well, it's still true."

Kyle sighed and rested his head on Stan's shoulder. "So let's get this stuff back so we can help your dad grill real food, huh?"

The only slightly taller of the two smiled, and replied, "Yeah," as he swiped his card through the reader on top of the finnicky machine. I was about to make myself known at that point, had Stan not changed the subject to: "How's your head?"

"Hmm?" Kyle wondered, sounding almost distant. "Oh. Um. Better."

"I promise this is my last stop, and then maybe we can go to Stark's or something so you can get some fresh air."

"I'll be fine, Stan."

"I believe you, I just… want you to be okay. And, like, not have it all sneak back up on you at once."

"Mmhmm."

Oh.

Okay. Cool. No reason to tell me if something was going on, or anything. It slightly perturbed me, but at the same time, a part of me understood that just because I had fought for years to convince my friends that there was something unnatural about me didn't mean that others with quirks would want that information widely shared. I'd never completely caught Kyle's full thoughts on his impressive telekinesis once the Cthulhu crisis had ended, but before and during, it had been a touchy subject.

However he felt about it, though, he'd really come a long way once he trained that ability. If there was even a chance that he could (well, _would)_ bring that back…

Stan completed his purchase and the two started out; I followed numbly like a sheep and began wondering how or if I was going to bring up the fact that I'd overheard them. That I knew something was up again with Kyle's quirk. We're spies, all of us, in our own way, when it comes to missions… it just does kinda suck when it turns out being on each other. And I didn't want to get in any kind of dumb feud with Kyle, we were too good friends for that.

"Jeez," Kyle started complaining as he drew his cell phone out of his back pocket, "I just remembered—hold on a sec, Stan, Kenny was—"

"Hey," I said, walking up to them at an angle, "I caught up with ya!" Close call, Kenny; good save.

"Jesus, there you are," Kyle sighed, tucking his phone away. The three of us walked in a line out of the sliding glass doors and into the parking lot, where I didn't watch where I was going… I was mostly looking for clues from either of them to see if they had any idea of what I wanted to talk about. Which was when I realized I was kind of being a dick for bringing it up like this, but I couldn't really take back what I was investigating now. "What's with these texts?"

"I had a question," I said, attempting to shrug.

"Dude, we saw you like an hour ago," said Kyle. "What's going on?"

"Who drove?"

"Uh, I did. What is going _on?"_ Kyle repeated.

"Your car around?"

Kyle didn't answer, and I wasn't watching my step. Which meant that of course the thing I fucking walked into was the hood of his second-hand station wagon. I swore at the circumstance and let the guys have a laugh at me, then scooted myself into the back seat, where I leaned up between the driver and passenger seats in order to speak privately with the guys as Kyle eased his car out of the parking lot.

"So, Kyle, man, I've got a question," I said.

"Apparently." Kyle held one hand out for Stan to fill with a pair of sunglasses from the glove box. He slid the glasses on to avoid any sun glare-induced collisions, and added, "What's so important we couldn't talk about it earlier?"

"It's, uh… actually, wow, I mean, maybe I am kinda making a big deal of this," I realized, "but, dude, I just wanted to check in with you."

"On?"

"The, um…"

_"What,_ Kenny?"

"That quirk thing."

"Quirk thing," Kyle repeated flatly. Stan let out a sigh and stopped himself from doing an idiosyncratic nose pinch. Instead, he kind of glared at me, then glanced out his window.

"Yeah, your—"

"I know what you mean, Kenny." Kyle tensed; I saw his hands clench around that car's enormous wheel. Stan looked almost like he wanted to swat me back like a bug. I probably was over-stepping something, but this was _kind of really fucking important._ "And no."

"You sure?"

"Yes," he growled through clenched teeth. The light at the four-way cross in front of us turned yellow, and Kyle slammed on the gas to push through before it could turn red.

"Jeez, sorry," I said tersely. "I just kinda… okay, look, dude, I'm sorry, but yes you are."

"Kenny, for fuck's sake," Stan muttered.

"You couldn't wait for a fucking meeting to talk about this?" Kyle snapped. "You had to wait until I was _driving?"_

"Well, the driving part I hadn't planned on, I just had to ask—"

"At a really fucking awkward time, Kenny!"

"I know, but, dude, I've gotta start planning shit out and if there's something going on, I need to know!"

The next light had just turned green. Kyle took in a deep breath, and I swear I saw that light flicker a couple of times before it flashed yellow and then shoot right up to red. We were the only car on the road, though, but still, I knew he'd done that. I fucking knew, somehow, he had done that.

Kyle slammed the car into park, handed Stan his sunglasses, and said firmly, "Chinese fire drill."

"What?" Stan yelped.

"Please drive, Stan."

"Kyle—"

"Stanley, drive the car!"

"Okay!"

Kyle and Stan opened their doors at the same time, and as the light flickered back to green, they'd just barely made it into each other's seats. Stan clicked on his seatbelt and eased the car back into drive and up to speed, but Kyle whirled around, climbed into the back seat beside me, and grabbed me in by the collar, narrowing his eyes at me. "Look," he said, very straightforwardly, "yes. Okay? If you must know, Kenny. Yes. But it's… weird, and I've been out of practice for a very, very long time. I don't know exactly what's going on, but if you _pressure me,_ dude, if you pressure me, it's just gonna add to the headache. Okay?"

"Okay," I said, attempting not to sound as guilty as I actually kinda felt. "Look, man, sorry, I just… look, I understand, all right?" I said, trying to ease Kyle into a calmer version of the conversation. "I know what it's like to have something going on about you that you can't explain."

"Hmm," was all Kyle offered. He let go of me and sat back; I saw Stan cast a quick glance in the rear-view mirror as Kyle leaned against his window. Kyle let out a huff of breath and watched the scenery go by for a few seconds, then turned to me again, waiting for me to say more.

"I also understand," I continued, "that your quirk's a touchy subject."

"It's a touchy _phenomenon,"_ Kyle half-complained. "Dude, it just comes and goes like the fucking weather. Sorry if I'm snapping about it, but I thought I could really call it done for a while. Then those damn paintings started going up, and those letters started coming, and my headaches haven't stopped since."

He did look pretty tired. He had at the coffee shop, too, I realized. But he was trying… keeping himself in conversations, managing to hide his apparent ailments and exhaustion. I have to say it: Kyle's self-control on things like that not only make him a good person, but a damn good League hero. But maybe it was his business-first attitude that was causing some of that tiredness, and my sudden questions about his returning ability weren't helping.

Then again, this whole fucking thing was sudden. The Ginger uprising had been a thing of the past. Tenorman was in the asylum. Things were fine.

Why now?

What was so fucking special about this one particular incident? _Why now?_

"Sorry," I said again, more sincerely.

"It's fine," said Kyle, managing to shrug. "I just wish you'd waited for a better time, dude, but whatever. I'm working on it, anyway, so don't worry."

Stan laughed. "Watch your pronouns, babe," he jeered, glancing back through the mirror again briefly.

Kyle rolled his eyes and lightly kicked Stan's seat. "Watch your nicknames, _sweetheart,"_ he joked right back. The couple laughed again at their own expense, but I chose not to comment or even react too much. Kyle and Stan never bought into the pet name thing. Certainly never in public, though I'd heard Stan slip things here and there when he got drunk… which wasn't often, but still. I just let them go ahead and mess around with it. Red and I just kinda said whatever happened; I loved pet-naming her, because I knew she loved to hear it. Whatever other people did was their own thing.

"Anyway," said Kyle, once Stan had slapped his leg away from the back of the driver's seat, "yeah, Kenny, we're working on it. I'll bring it up when I need to. Okay? That fair?"

"Yeah, dude, that's fair," I told him. "Just, you know, I wanna be in the loop, okay? If it's bugging you, or if there's something we've gotta watch out for. I mean, I've got a feeling we're gonna be back on the field pretty soon. I want us to be ready in case you do have a, uh… something go on. Y'know?"

Kyle nodded. "I didn't mean to be keeping it from you, or the guys, or anything, I just wanted to get a hold of it again first. Trust myself before anything," he admitted.

Which was completely understandable.

Stan drove back through town to drop me off at my work site, and as I left to switch gears and just think about this damn all-evening painting and detailing job, I couldn't help but wonder when exactly we were going to start seeing some action. And just what kind of opponents we really had.

– – –

I didn't have to wonder for long.

It happened that night.

Toward the end of my shift, as my crew and I were working with spotlighting in order to finish before it got too dark, we hit on something huge. In many ways, I realized, I shouldn't have been surprised. Clyde and Craig had seen posters. Ike had gotten a carnival ticket. Kyle and Red had gotten letters.

Only a matter of time until it spread further.

Whatever the GSM was doing, they wanted to get the word out about their movement, and _fast._ And what better way, it seemed, to spread information than over the airwaves? South Park is still very much a radio town. We have a local station, and we pick up various FM stations from the surrounding area, and it's not uncommon for our parents' generation to keep the radio on for background noise.

The paint crew was no exception. The guys I was working with enjoyed their classic rock, so someone or other would always end up bringing his portable stereo.

We were just off of Main Street that night, in the downtown district, peeling off chipping old paint from the '90s and giving a fresh coat to a standard, three-storey rectangular, block-end office building. A scaffold had been set up on the left-hand side of the building, but I was doing the finer work in the front… the door and window frames, the patchwork, evening everything out.

The guys didn't put me on the scaffold still, after about six years of being on and off with this one crew. It was from me making up a fear of extreme heights back in high school. The real fear was falling off the scaffolding, dying, and therefore not getting paid. That was no longer a worry… not to the extreme that it had once been, but better safe than sorry, I guess.

I was just finishing up my own work and sealing up a can of red paint when it started. The stereo skipped. A couple guys grumbled, but for the most part, nobody noticed. I, however, stared over at the device, which was plugged into a long orange extension cord that slithered around the front of the building and into a hidden outlet on the side.

The music was unaffected long enough for me to creep over to our pile of supplies at the front steps. Another skip. I glared back, then quickly began cleaning off my hands and arms, more interested in washing the smell of paint off of me than the paint itself.

Didn't matter how trivial it seemed. Every single night held the potential for needing Mysterion. So I needed to be ready.

The radio crackled with a loud, persistent static that not only drowned out Led Zeppelin but threatened to burst all our eardrums. Everyone on the paint team cringed, myself included, and the lead guy shouted at the man who'd set up the radio, "Fuck's sake, Stevenson, turn that damn thing off!"

"Hey, McCormick, hit the volume, would ya?" Stevenson called over to me, since I was the closest to the radio. Glad to silence the static as soon as possible, I obliged.

But as soon as I turned the dial to switch the station, music returned to the airwaves. A far cry from classic rock, though, this faint tune seemed like it was hurdy gurdy music being scratched out from a victrola, sounding vaguely reminiscent of Radiohead's "Karma Police."

"The fuck is that?" one of the men on the crew asked.

"Change that shit, McCormick, what happened to 'Black Dog?'"

"Dude, I dunno, it's on every station," I complained. It sure as hell was. Not the most inventive takeover, but I knew that this had to do with the GSM somehow. Tenorman never had been laudable for his originality. No matter where I turned the dial, that same fucking incessant music kept screaming over the air.

"Throw your stupid iPod in, then, kid," another guy instructed me, "just none-a that there Kanye shit y'all like."

Kanye shit my ass, that was old news and stupid anyway, in my opinion. (I don't care too much about music, I just listen to whatever Red feels like putting on to make out to, whether its Taylor fuckin' Swift—all I know about her is she's got really sexy hair—or the Beatles.) I just shook my head at the comment and fiddled with the radio a little more, only to keep on finding the music on every single station. "Fuckin' stupid, Tenorman," I muttered.

"Citizens of South Park," a voice came over the radio. My eyes went wide. "Thank you for tuning into Red Radio. I assure you, this PSA will take but a moment of your time."

"The hell?" someone commented.

"McCormick, why're you stallin'?"

"I-it won't turn off!" That was such a lie. I hadn't even tried to shut the radio off, but fuck it, I had to hear this. I wasn't gonna wait for a second-hand report. Tenorman and his dumb Gingers could take over the airwaves, sure, but to address the town? That was a direct call out on me and my team.

"These… weekly transmissions," the voice—male, but not Tenorman's—continued, "are very important, not only to us, but to you. You are advised to tune in at this time every week, as there will be a grand new world at your feet when we reach the final broadcast. Remember, this is Red Radio. You can find us if you know where to look. You will not regret it."

While the rest of the paint crew talked about how this must have been a promo for some kind of huge lottery everyone was automatically entered into, I just stared at the radio as the hurdy gurdy version of "Karma Police" returned to grate at my ears.

Red Radio. Red Devil/Red Hair. Shit was getting redundant, but maybe they were being obvious on purpose. To distract our attention from something else?

"Oh," said the voice, causing the music to hush a bit, "and one more thing." My heart skipped, and I glanced around me. Nobody else seemed to be hearing this. "I know what you're thinking, Mysterion."

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck.

Who the fuck was that?

Who was giving the PSA?

And _why?_ Why be so Goddamn obvious? They were trying to make it look easy; that's all I could think of. Trying to give us the sense that they lacked good ideas and could therefore play us into any trap they could devise. Sure, they were predictable, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized… well, no: we had no idea what their goal was this time.

"I know what you're thinking. How can I be addressing only you?"

I gasped, but tried not to make myself obvious.

"This is much, much more than you wanted, town hero. And I assure you… not all curses can die. Enjoy the ride."

Before I could even react, a sledgehammer came down onto the radio, shattering it to bits. I shielded my face from the shrapnel with both arms and let myself defensively fall back, while the other men on the paint team all let out shouts and hollers of surprise and wonder.

"What the fuck wuzzat?"

"Shut up, Davis, do you have any idea who that is?"

"Aw, shit, we gotta—"

"Yeah," Toolshed agreed from over me in his usual rough tone, reserved for League activity, "you should get out of here."

"Hey!" That was Stevenson. "Town hero or not, that guy broke my stereo."

"So I owe you," said Toolshed plainly, turning to glare at my co-worker. "Get out of here. NOW."

"Yer really gonna—"

"Yeah, but gimme a week," Toolshed growled, frustrated. "I'm a busy guy."

"Hear that, guys? Toolshed owes Stevenson a radio!"

"Look, get _out_ of here!"

_"Toolshed!"_ Marpesia was here, too? What the hell did I miss? "Nine o'clock!"

Lightning fast, Toolshed turned to his right and hit a figure dressed in tight black clothing right in the gut. The figure of undiscernable gender flew far off, to the other side of the street, where Marpesia picked up the struggling person and rammed him—or her—into the side of the building nearest her.

"What'd I say?" Toolshed barked back at my idiot paint crew, the lot of whom were still standing and staring in awe. "Get outta here! Shadow League's got this covered."

…Which made me realize that I hadn't moved, either. Fuck. _Fuck._ What was going on? Had we known about this?

Toolshed glared down at me, and made a subtle tick of his head in the direction behind me. _"Move,"_ he instructed.

That got me up and booking it. My feet hit the pavement so fast I hardly felt myself moving.

"McCormick!" the head guy from my crew hollered after me. "Where you goin'? I got a truck'll hold all of—"

"Gotta find my sister!" I yelled back. Which was not entirely a lie. The Guardian Angel was sure to be around here somewhere. As I ran, I went through all that we so far knew in my head, and wondered if any of that could at all help us.

Obviously, the League was being directly attacked. Red and Kyle were targets, and I had been called out on the radio. Tenorman was sending out GSM propaganda left and right, so that was basically a call out on his half-brother, too. This involved all of us.

And I was pretty fucking sure Tenorman had done his research. If he was turning to radio—to music—to contact us… been there, done that, buddy. The more predictable his movements, the more I was convinced he was just trying to distract us. Even if he wasn't, his moves were very stupidly brilliant.

What bothered me most, right now, was that voice on the radio. Whose was it, and what was it talking about, saying curses can't die…?

I wasn't about to die again to find out for myself, though, that was for damn sure.

A disc whirred past my right ear and I ducked out of the way just in time for TupperWear's signature weapon to hit its mark on the chin of a guy I hadn't even noticed behind me. When the black-clad man recovered and reached for me, instinct kicked in, and I grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him, and held him in a headlock until he'd lost consciousness. I dropped the man just as TupperWear then darted in front of me and knocked a—_very_ tightly-clad—woman down with a crushing overhead blow.

"Look alive," TupperWear said to me, his affected voice somewhat laced with scrutiny for my taking clear Mysterion action while still in my street clothes. At least nobody else was around… but he was right, I'd taken a pretty dumb risk.

TupperWear shoved me off to my left, so I continued in that direction until I found myself outside of an empty three-floored storefront claiming it had just gone out of business and was available for lease. I grinned and darted around to the back alley of the building.

Before I could even think to jump up to the fire escape, a thin, barely-visible rope swung down at me. Still at a run, I grabbed on, and the rope lifted. To make the elevation easier, I kept up my run as long as I could, then swung myself toward the building beside the one for lease, and kicked off the wall; the rope tugged me swiftly back over to the top of the fire escape, where, as soon as I landed, the Human Kite reached out an open window and grabbed me in by the front of my shirt.

I stumbled into a room lit only with utility flashlights. The poorly-carpeted floor creaked a little as I corrected my stance, and I looked around to find myself in the company of a few sheet-covered tables and chairs, a stack of moving boxes, and, of course, the Guardian Angel and the Human Kite, the latter of whom was now gathering his line back up into its spool as he kept an eye out the window.

Angel put a gloved finger to her white-painted lips and pointed down at a duffel bag I hadn't noticed upon my first survey of the room. I nodded and dove for the bag, finding all of my gear and weapons inside. Quick as I could, I stripped down to my boxers, kicked off my sneakers, and pulled on my thin under-armor vest and familiar Mysterion uniform.

Kite shut the window when I'd gotten to lacing my boots, then said, "We're clear."

"Talk to me," I asked, looking up at my teammates. I finished with my boots and secured my fully-stocked utility belt into place. "What's going on?"

"Don't suppose you've been listening to the radio?" Kite wondered.

"Actually, yeah," I told him, diving back into the bag for my black cloth mask. What the hell's that all about?"

"Red Serge and Iron Maiden are trying to trace the radio waves to the right station," Kite told me, "but as soon as that voice came on, these guys started showing up."

"Luckily, a bunch of us were already on patrol," Angel added.

"So we've got you guys, TupperWear and Marpesia, and Toolshed?" I guessed.

"Yeah," said Angel. "Toolshed's making the calls on this end, and I just got Mosquito on board to lead the full B-team on the other side of town."

"Good thinking," I complimented her. "Thanks."

I tied my mask into place, secured my wire, and stood, tossing my hood up over my head. "So," I continued, fully committed, now, to my lower Mysterion tone, "any idea what they want?"

"Safe bet they're part of the GSM," said Kite, as Angel switched off all but one of the flashlights and tossed them into the duffel bag after my clothes.

"Also a safe bet that this whole radio thing is just one big diversion," said Angel. She tossed the bag over her back, took up the remaining flashlight, and said, "Let's move."

She led the way across the ghost of a room and toward the stairs. We went down only one flight, to a window that was only really a sheet of plexiglass shoved lazily into a frame. Kite dislodged the plexiglass to let me and Angel out without a word. He didn't follow.

"Guessing he's got another plan?" I said to Angel once we were making our way down the fire escape. "Nice of him to say so."

"Discretion's his middle name," Angel grinned. "But yeah, we'll be seeing him again once we're on the field."

Angel leapt down to the ground first, and I followed after taking a listen out onto the street. TupperWear, Toolshed and Marpesia were still very much active, from the sound of things. I still got the sense, though, that we were throwing blind punches. The look on Angel's face, plus her earlier comment, told me that she was thinking the same. And judging from Kite's almost dismissive behavior, he was taking this with caution, too… and possibly personally.

This was going to make for an interesting wrap-up meeting.

Once I was on the ground in the alley again, Angel asked into her wire, "Red Serge, do you mind?"

"Unlocked for fifteen seconds," Red Serge granted her over the wire. Headlights flashed from behind us, and Angel rushed over to toss the duffel bag and flashlight into the back of TupperWear's hidden black SUV, its plates, as usual, removed. "Hey, Mysterion, can I get a signal test, buddy?"

"Can I replace 'test, one, two' with 'don't call me _buddy?'"_ I mocked him.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that."

The SUV locked back up after the set limit, and Angel signaled for me to follow her.

We'd barely made it back to where I'd run into TupperWear before the first strike hit. Six black-clad fighters, their eyes obscured by glowing red goggles, darted out at us. Each one, I noticed at last, wore a black tank top and tight black pants; on their lower arms were what appeared to be gauntlets, each one adorned with three rows of three red circles. I took out one man with a quick _shuriken_ to the knees, then crouched down so that I had my back flat. Angel rolled over my back, hooking elbows with me, and grabbed another man into a headlock between her ankles, then flipped off of me, twirling the man down into yet another—two guaranteed concussions.

She threw a punch as I went for a low kick on the next two, and the sixth was taken out by another of TupperWear's heavy hurling discs. "That about clears this sector, guys," our well-armored companion informed us, joining us from where he'd been on the adjacent sidewalk. "Good to have you on the field, Mysterion."

"Glad I could make it," I admitted. "What've we got?"

"Just a whole mess of these guys. Delphi's nicknamed 'em Infra-Reds, for the goggles," said TupperWear, waving for us to follow him back toward Toolshed's sector.

"Too catchy for these bastards," I said, "but that's easy to remember."

"Anything yet on what they're after?" Angel wondered.

"Kite's the eye in the sky as usual; he's tracking movements, and from the looks of things, they just want us."

"Joy," I muttered.

"Fun just keeps on comin'," TupperWear agreed on a similarly blank tone.

We were immediately back in the action. It was sudden and unexpected, this strange attack, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a thrill.

The Infra-Reds (okay, okay, Bebe, it _does_ work) were coming from all sides, and for the life of me I could not figure out how. How I hadn't noticed, for one thing, and how limitless their numbers seemed. It was like a plague, watching them almost literally crawl out of the woodwork and onto the streets. Honestly—and I thought I knew every nook, cranny, and shadow in town.

The Human Kite had beaten the three of us to the scene, and judging from the angles at which some of the black-clad men were lying, wounded and defeated, he'd managed to make an unnoticed aerial entrance. He, Toolshed and Marpesia now stood back to back, their favored weapons ready in hand: Kite with his rope, Toolshed with his two automatic drill guns, and Marpesia with her extendable quarter staff, which she spun as she spoke.

"All right, boys, on three," the decidedly Amazonian heroine ordered. "One…" Toolshed crouched into a running position. "Two… _THREE!"_

Toolshed began to run, then feinted, spun, and fired bits from his guns straight ahead of him and to his left. One of the men he shot, in the shoulder, stumbled back, directly into where Kite was waiting with a length of his emulsified rope to grab the man around the neck and, with a deep intake of breath, hurl him over his shoulder with enough force to bowl over several others. Kite was left in a near backbend, so he quickly kicked himself back in time for his hands to hit the ground and for him to spiral back onto his feet, kicking down another man in the process.

He ducked just as soon as he'd righted himself, and Marpesia was there with her quarter staff to strike a blow at another man who'd come up from behind. "Pardon me," she said to her comrade, as she struck the man down to the side, spun out her quarter staff to a longer length, and high-jumped it over Kite, delivering a roundhouse kick to still two others.

TupperWear had, by this point, I noticed, joined Toolshed, who'd taken out a few more of the Infra-Reds with non-lethal but still very well-aimed shots from his drill guns. TupperWear, in his usual defensive style, stood close by, sharpened shield out, and was driving others back away from the current trio and toward us.

"Mysterion!" Marpesia hollered over to me. A man lunged for her, but she spun and punched him down.

"The hell's going on out here?" I asked.

As if that had been some kind of signal, every active member of that strange Infra-Red team looked up, their glowing goggles all glaring unwaveringly in my direction. That gave me something of an answer, but I didn't like it. I wanted to know who the hell these fucks were actually targeting, and why.

And whether or not this had anything to do with the curse I'd rid myself of, four years prior.

It certainly seemed unconnected at first, but it very well could have been that the Gingers felt they'd missed an opportunity to do something huge, in around all of the Cult activity, and had just now come into a way to strike on their own. Why they'd be after me was a puzzler, in that case. Unless, of course, they were under some stupid assumption that I still had some kind of secret to Immortality.

Nice try, in that case. Hopefully this wouldn't take too long. I had other things to do.

"I don't think we've got much time for questions," said Angel. She reached into her utility belt and withdrew a weapon she'd been working with for quite some time: a damn dead accurate slingshot. The pull had three distinct baskets, so she could choose to load only the center for one sharp attack, or all three for a volley. On her left hip, she had a large but lightweight pocket full of various marbles that she and Red Serge had been working on while the rest of us were absent from town. Some were loaded with pressurized explosives, some were smoke bombs, and some were just dense lead.

No matter what she shot, though, my sister rarely missed.

She had a very keen eye on the field, and now was quietly selecting three weapons to load into her slingshot. "As soon as I shoot," she instructed me, "go."

"Doing this with a bang?" I asked.

"Nope, just gonna level the field the old fashioned way."

So she was striking with lead. Toolshed glanced over, noticing that Angel was about to attack. Being the other marksman among us, he slowly worked his way over, while our opponents were still distracted with so much as my presence.

"Let's get this over with!" Angel called out to the rest.

With that, she pulled back on her slingshot, shooting out the three lead marbles into the foreheads of three Infra-Reds. Toolshed ducked beneath her attack and got down to his knees, shooting out behind the Guardian Angel at a line heading for us from the back. As instructed, I darted forward, and instantly had men on both sides.

I jumped up above them and dealt a roundhouse kick to both, then ran down the back of the man on my right, set my hands on the shoulders of yet another who'd approached, and swung myself around him; I got a solid grip of his shoulders and tossed him to the side, where Marpesia was waiting to swing her quarter staff like a bat into the man's ribs.

She let him fall, then ran over him and toward TupperWear, who'd just struck down another three with his shield. Maybe Wendy and Token were iffy on the relationship front nowadays, but nothing had gotten in the way of the incredible chemistry Marpesia and TupperWear had on the field. Those two had _professional_ stamped on everything they did, I swear.

The two nodded at each other, and, after they'd both punched out a couple of opponents who'd just risen out of their dazes, TupperWear hurled his shield out onto the street stretching back behind where I now stood. I didn't have much time to notice why, due to a handful of others approaching me.

One of the Guardian Angel's lead weights smacked one down with a hit to the back of the skull, but I was still on my own against a few. Knowing the right places to strike, I grabbed out two of my _shuriken_ and went low. Rather than go for throwing my sharp, time-honored weapons, I held them between my index and middle fingers and scratched the hooked blades into my opponents' shins.

"What the hell is wrong with these guys?" I heard Kite ask out to no one in particular. "They feel pain, or what?"

Now that he mentioned it—not a one of these guys had really expressed any discomfort while we'd been striking them down. Either they had great resilience, or something really was off about them.

"Comin' through, boys!" Marpesia hollered out.

I glanced up in time to bolt to the side. So that was why TupperWear had thrown the shield: Marpesia rode it like a board as it skidded, sparks flying, down the tarred road, and she took out men and women left and right with her quarter staff as she angled the shield's path as easily as if she were navigating through snow on a slope.

Once Marpesia had knocked out a good number of them, she skidded the shield to a halt and hefted it up over her shoulder as she walked back over toward us. "Hey, Mysterion," she said to me, ticking her chin up. "Why don't we finish this up?"

"Sounds like a great plan," I said, surveying the rest of the field, "but where the hell does this wave end?"

"Just how fucking big _is_ this group?" Kite asked, making his way over to me.

"Didn't you get a look from overhead?" I wondered.

Kite opened his mouth to answer, then rolled his eyes behind his goggles as a man charged up behind him, and instead said, "Hold that thought."

He jabbed back with his right elbow, clocking the man in the nose, then turned to kick him down. As Toolshed and Angel continued shooting down the men and women coming at us from a distance, Kite and I ended up back to back, faced with a few more still trickling in. Where Marpesia had gone off to, I couldn't tell, nor did I catch another glimpse of TupperWear, but I couldn't say I was worried about them.

"Before I was so—" Kite began, grabbing two men and smacking their heads together while I chucked a _shuriken_ out at a woman and then immediately punched down a guy who'd gotten a little too close for comfort, _"rudely_ interrupted—" Kite spun out a butterfly knife from his utility belt and cut into a woman's shoulder, then spun her around to where I could hurl her into two of her comrades, "I was going to say that if I'd stayed on the fucking rooftops, I'd still be up there getting a count. I just planted a bug so Red Serge can try to track things later."

"Good thinking," I nodded, kicking down yet another.

"Hey, guys," Red Serge's voice came through the wire.

"Perfect timing," Kite laughed.

"Looks like we're reaching the end of this wave. If you can corral 'em all together, I've got Yates alerted after some talking," said Red Serge. "Murphy's on his way to Mosquito's group, and Yates is heading your way in a few. Get those guys all together and we'll hopefully get an arrest and some names."

"Thanks, man," I said. "You guys all hear that?" I called out to the group.

"Sure did," said Angel. "And me and Toolshed have a plan."

"TupperWear's getting the car," Marpesia added. "I'm game to hear this."

"Same here," said the Human Kite.

The other three approached where Kite and I stood. While Angel grabbed Marpesia and managed to whisper something to her (with Marpesia's helmet, that was a little awkward, but she managed), all Toolshed had to say was, "Yo, get to the scaffold."

"Oh," Kite grinned, "I like where this is going."

"Just give me some of your rope and wait for it to come back to you," said Toolshed.

"Sounds good." The Human Kite tucked his knife away, tossed a spool to Toolshed, and rushed for the scaffolding at my work site. I'd already forgotten that I'd even been on a different job just minutes ago.

"Care to share with the class?" I asked the two with the plan.

"Marpesia and I," said Angel, "are gonna do what we can to do just what Red Serge asked.

"Corral these guys?" I guessed.

"Exactly. Mysterion, you and I are gonna field everyone in toward Marpesia and Angel," said Toolshed. "Then, stay outta sight for a minute if you can. We're gonna need you to help us finish this up with a bang."

Well, as vague as the two were being, I trusted them. Sometimes, we had little choice on the field _but_ to be vague with each other, and hope that the rest would catch on. A dozen years of fighting side by side had done wonders for how well we could communicate without words to each other. Red Serge had been quick to catch on when he'd first joined the core group, as had Marpesia and Craig four years prior. And as for the Guardian Angel, well… she had my full trust already, and the guys now knew her just as well as they knew me.

"Yo, guys, just a heads-up," Mosquito's affected, pinched nasal tone buzzed through the wire, "Murphy's team just showed up. Mysterion, you guys need backup, or…?"

"No, we're good," I said. I nodded to Toolshed, who rushed off in one direction while I took the other. "Head back to the base. TupperWear, what's your location?"

"Close," came his answer. "I'm standing by to get you guys back to the base, too."

"Great. Let's get this over with."

They still came in droves. I estimated that we had already knocked out around fifty Infra-Reds by the time two dozen more came at us out of every shadow of the street. I knocked out those that I could, and directed the rest back toward the two charged with the task of 'corralling,' however Angel was choosing to interpret that word, but all the while, I tried to wrap my head around the attack.

How much of this was just distraction?

What had been the reason that every one of these guys had given me their full attention? Furthermore, why not the Human Kite? Did they not know that he was one of the very people they'd been bombarding with propaganda letters? If not, that could be fortunate… at least for him. It might mean that they weren't after him for his quirk, just his red hair.

I wasn't going to rule out anything, though. Not until we got more facts. Hopefully, after this fight, more were coming. Facts, I mean, not those fucks we were fighting off.

Once it seemed like Toolshed and I were pretty clear on both sides, I did as he'd earlier instructed and got out of sight, fast. I bolted around into the shadows myself, pressing my back to the cool concrete of an industrial building directly across the street from the scaffolded office building which was serving as Kite's takeoff point.

"On your call," I said. "I'm good when you are, guys."

"Hold for five," Kite instructed.

I slid a Roman candle out of my utility belt and pressed my thumb against the trigger of my lighter. For accuracy's sake, I peered around the side of the building to where Angel and Marpesia had shepherded the Infra-Reds. Right into a perfect little clump. Goddamn, those girls had good instincts. Not a single one of our opponents would be able to dodge the flash.

"Light it up, Mysterion!" Toolshed called.

"Bomb drop!" I hollered out to the field.

While our opponents stared around in what appeared to be terror—ha, they'd probably studied my usual bag of tricks… but they'd fallen for one all the same—Marpesia and the Guardian Angel bolted out of the way, leaving me room to light up the Roman candle and hurl it in overhead by about ten feet. The firework went off on time, sending out blinding sparks around the helpless group in black.

Toolshed, used to working through the sparks, darted past me, finishing up a double-knot of Kite's string on the end of his sledgehammer; he sprinted out toward the group and looped himself once around the Infra-Reds, then tossed his sledgehammer skyward. Angel followed up my flash with a smoke bomb of her own to further distract our opponents, and two seconds later, Kite sailed through the smoke, glider extended, sledgehammer in hand. Toolshed and Angel bolted to the side, and with a deep breath, Kite hurled the sledgehammer back down.

Toolshed was back on it, caught the duo's favorite and most effective weapon, and tugged. My eyes widened when I realized that what they'd done was create one huge double lasso around the entire group. Kite landed, skidding about five feet with his boots on the gravel until he stopped, but as soon as he had, he yanked on the spool end of the rope, and the full dozen were knotted up tighter than my own fucking laces.

"Got 'em!" Toolshed called over to his partner as he un-tied his end of the rope.

"Fuckin' right!" Kite called back. He spun a butterfly knife out from his belt, slit his part of the rope, then re-secured the knife and spool both before walking back over to the rest of us. "Mysterion, ladies, nice aim, there."

"Jesus, these guys gave us a run, though," Marpesia commented. "Did I hear Yates is on the way?" I nodded.

"We sticking around for that?" Toolshed wondered.

"Angel and I will," I volunteered. "You guys all head back with TupperWear and we'll sort all this shit out back at the base, 'kay?"

"You got it," Toolshed said, giving me a salute as the sound of sirens approached.

"If we're going, guys, let's pick up the pace," Kite suggested. With that, those three ran in the opposite direction to catch their ride.

No sooner had they rushed out of sight than the cops arrived with wagons, ready to cart the Infra-Reds away to the station. Something didn't feel right, though. The night didn't quite seem over. After all, I thought as I cast a glance back over at the stereo Toolshed had crushed earlier, nobody would up and call me out on the radio without also firing a warning shot.

"Didn't happen to question any of these guys, did you?" I asked Angel, as the two of us stood guard over the huddled clump of black-clad bodies, now illuminated in the reds and blues of approaching patrol cars.

"Kite and I tried," was her answer. The Guardian Angel shook her head, her own white wing barrette catching the flashing light as well. "He and I are both pretty good negotiators, as you know." (Angel had more patience, though. If the Human Kite didn't get an immediate answer, he'd often retaliate by knocking the other guy unconscious. Not that that wasn't also effective, mind you, but he could stand to be a little more patient. Just a little.) "These guys just weren't saying a thing."

"They weren't reacting much, either," I remembered. Glancing down the street, I guessed I had about twenty seconds. To use them as best I could, I strode up to a man on the outside of the bundled circle and grabbed him by the front of his cat burglar-esque uniform. "Who are you?" I growled at the guy. "Answer me before the cops get here and I might let you go."

The man just grinned, and made no sound. Which pissed me off. I punched him across the face (okay, so a lot of us don't have as much patience as the Guardian Angel…) and hollered, "Who are you, who are you working for, and what do you _want?"_

I had to stop myself from asking, _"What do you want with my girlfriend?"_ Luckily, I dodged that bullet by biting my tongue at the end of the actual question.

"Uh… Mysterion?" Angel said from behind me.

"What?"

I couldn't hear her answer, but the thing that drowned her out was probably the answer itself. As soon as the patrol cars and wagons whined their way toward us to surround the gathered GSM activists, the easily recognizable whirling of helicopter blades could be heard from overhead.

Startled, I glanced up and took several steps back. Instinct told me to grab onto one of my pistols, and it seemed that Angel had done the same thing. She wasn't much one for guns, but she carried one for extreme circumstances. On the barrel of hers was written in white, _Romans 3:23,_ to remind her that, even doing her work as the Guardian Angel, all of us were human, and all of us did wrong as well as good. She was such a balancing force and voice for the team. It was wonderful having her on board… and almost grieving to think about what might become of the League once she left town for school, and both of us would be gone.

But for now, we were here, we were partners, and there was a fucking helicopter overhead. And it did not belong to the Park County force.

"All right," the usual no-nonsense, aggravated tone of Sargeant Yates drawled out from a position off to my left, "just what the hell is going on out here?"

"Get these guys down to your station," I instructed the cop. "Now."

"Woah, now, just hold on, there, Mysterion." Yates strode forward, while a team of about ten got out of their cars and pointed their own pistols skyward. Angel and I tucked our own firearms away, but I still did not like the look of that aerial vehicle, just hovering only a couple hundred feet above us.

Yates was a man whose motivation came and went. Tonight, he appeared rather tired, but he and his partner, Murphy, always made time for us. Mayor McDaniels, still in office after all this time, had insisted that we always have a say, even without the police already relying on us. I couldn't help but feel that Yates often felt slightly threatened by the Shadow League, though. After all, the cops were pretty much our cleanup crew when it came to big things like this.

"Where'd these guys come from?" the red-haired sargeant asked me.

Wait.

Yates was a red-head. How the fuck had I not thought of that before?

"And what—" he started.

"Sir," I said, "with all due respect, you might want to get back in your car."

"Not until I know why you've tied up a bunch of people and what this Goddamn helicopter is doing out of regulation!"

"Helicopter's news to us, too," I said, "but you really sho—"

"Good evening!" a voice came from above.

My hand was immediately back on my .45. That was the same voice I'd heard on the radio. It wasn't Scott Tenorman's voice, I knew that much. I couldn't say I recognized it, but I had the awful feeling that not pinpointing it could be a danger to me. Why _would_ I know that voice, though? Now wasn't the time to rack my brain about it; hopefully Red Serge or Iron Maiden had gotten a recording of the radio broadcast from earlier.

"My dear Park County police force, there will be no need of such brash action tonight," the voice continued. "You may take these men and women if you must, but let this be a signal to you that they are much, much greater in number."

"What the devil is going on?" Yates growled out. "You take that helicopter out of here, you hear me? This is civilian terri—"

The voice let out a laugh. "Oh, we will take our leave," it said.

"Round 'em up, boys," Yates instructed his team. "Get these people out of here and downtown, pronto. And as for you, Mysterion, and you, Guardian Angel—"

Another laugh from the voice overhead. "Pray to that Angel while you can, Sargeant. I wanted to personally drop off a gift for you. Consider it, if you will."

"NO FUCKING WAY!" I hollered, sending three bullets skyward.

The helicopter made off at that point, though… but not before another female Infra-Red came parachuting out of it. She landed directly between me and the sargeant, and held out an envelope for him.

It was identical to the ones Red had been getting. Identical to the one Kyle had opened, alongside my girlfriend, during our last meeting. Stark white, sealed on the back with red wax and a Gothic script _T._

Puzzled, the officer took it. Goddamn fucking stupid police. "Don't open it!" I instructed.

"Just take it into consideration," said the young woman.

"Oh, so you guys _can_ talk," I scoffed, grabbing at the girl's goggles from behind. "Hope you don't mind."

I grabbed off her goggles, and the girl whirled around, her hand going for my hood, but Angel was there in a flash, tackling the activist down before I could be unmasked as well. Angel pinned the girl's arms down, then hauled her up so that Yates could slap her into handcuffs.

"All right," said Yates, shoving the girl into the back of his own patrol car while his men rounded up the rest into the wagons, "you're all coming down to the station. You have the right to remain silent—"

"Silence, Sargeant," the girl got out before the senior officer could close the door of his car, "is the last thing on our minds."

Angel and I glanced at one another. Both of us wanted to take the girl in ourselves, but once the cops had their hands on our opponents, no matter how personal the fight, the best we could hope for was a visit to the Park County jail every now and then. Sure, we could get in whenever we wanted, but we had our own holding cells at the base, which were infinitely easier to access whenever we did manage to take someone in ourselves.

But Yates slammed the door, so we'd have to wait for our answers.

Before the police could leave the scene, I grabbed Yates aside and reiterated, "I'm completely serious. Do not, under any circumstances, open that letter."

"What's so great about it?" the officer wondered, looking me up and down with scrutiny before casting his tired glance on the envelope he still held in one hand.

"It's a terrorist threat," I told him. "We've already tracked some of these, and in order to follow their trail, we need to alert any recipients of that envelope to not tear them open. All right? You have to assure me, Sargeant, that you aren't going to go against me on this."

Yates rubbed his chin, scruffy with an awful five o'clock shadow, in contemplation, and held the envelope up to the flashing light of his own patrol car, as if to take a peek inside. "If this is evidence, though—"

"You just need to trust me," I said firmly. "Do you understand?"

Yates was a man who did not like to be outdone. And I'd been outshining him for years. He still came to me for help, he came to everyone in the League, but I knew the guy. He'd have that thing opened in a heartbeat. But at least I'd have warned him. He was an odd man, but he did his job fairly well. Those envelopes contained recruitment letters.

I had to wonder which was worse: joining that movement, or falling into the type of insanity Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep had spread four years prior. If men and women were signing up willingly, though… and if the numbers were already so high…

We'd just have to wait and see.

"One more thing," I added before the officer could return to his car. Yates gave me his attention, but made it clear he'd rather be calling his own shots. "You hear anything about a Carnival, you let us know."

"Carnival?" he asked, sounding unimpressed.

"Just—"

"Trust you, I know, I know."

"Look, if you're going to fight me on this—" I began.

Yates shook his head. "Long day, kid," he told me. "This is just one more thing I didn't need on my to-do list."

"So we're on the same page?" I asked.

"We'll call you, you call us, same deal, Mysterion, same deal." Yates sighed, and hauled open the driver's door to his patrol car. "You know we trust you and your whole League," he added, giving me and Angel a nod. "So keep doing your thing. The town still needs you."

"We'll be here," I said. Then, to Angel, I beckoned, "Come on." And as the patrol cars and wagons sped away back to the station with their lights flashing and the convicted activists in tow, the Guardian Angel and I returned to the shadows, taking every shortcut we knew back to the base to get a full handle on everything that had transpired over the last twenty-four hours.

"Oh, by the way?" said Angel as we walked, her eyes narrowed on the cloudy night sky. "Did you happen to get my message from earlier?"

"No," I told her. "About what?"

"Tenorman."

"What's the verdict?"

"I'm pretty sure he's on board that fucking helicopter."

Shit.

Well, so much for contained insanity. Hello, summer full of tracking that fucker down.

Now my focus had to be on getting information out of that group. Luckily, my team was pretty damn good at doling out the right questions. The sooner we got someone from that group to talk, the better.

But I had an idea of where I'd rather start, and it wasn't with anyone in the GSM.

It was with someone in the League. After all, if a team is as weak as its weakest link, I didn't want anything dangerous sliding toward us under the nose of one Eric Theodore Cartman.

– – –

_Romans 3:23_

"_For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."_

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Into the thick of it now! ^^ I loved getting back into writing fights with these guys…! The fight's starting kinda fast, but the conflict is still pretty far away yet~ Honestly, coming up with what the Goths ended up doing, with that coffee shop, was one of my favorite reasons for setting this a few years after _Cthulhu Fhtagn;_ I just really love the Goths, haha…

Next week, Butters narrates, and we'll get into a little more of what the rest of the League has been up to, and delve into the trials to come.

Thank you so much for reading! It was great to hear from returning readers, too~ We'll see you again next **Wednesday, July 4****th****!** (But… wow now that I realize what date that is… haha, it might go up Tuesday or Thursday, I totally did not realize that was the holiday… we'll see! I'll keep my profile up to date on when chapter 3 will go up…) :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	3. Ep 3: The Calm After Chaos

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _****_|_|_|**

_Butters_

By the time Mysterion and the Guardian Angel returned to the base, a few of us had already changed out of uniform and back into our street clothes. I was glad I hadn't been working that night, since the Second Coming of the Lame-Ass Ginger Rebellion (as some asshole on the team decided to call it—guess who…) was the first huge test to my personal League involvement. This was my chance to get more official with how I had chosen to become a hero.

I'd been on call, and was more than happy to help when Red Serge sent out the order for me to join Mosquito's half of the team that evening in pushing back the group Bebe had nicknamed the Infra-Reds. I did still feel a little intimidated by Mosquito—Clyde in general, really—and Craig, especially when we were out on the field. Those guys really knew how to fight. So did the Coon: he was a seasoned pro. But I was placed right in beside them and darn it, I was working hard to prove myself.

Mysterion hadn't voiced any major complaints about me so far, so I knew I was doing something right.

More along the lines of my feeling intimidated by other League members, though, since I was one of the few just sitting at the table in jeans and a sweatshirt, the entrance of the brother and sister duo helped to remind me just how new to League involvement I truly was. Craig, Cartman, Ike, and Timmy were the others out of uniform, while Clyde, Stan, Kyle, Wendy and Token were still mostly dressed for action… masks and goggles the like had been cast aside for the time being, but in a flash, Clyde could be Mosquito again, or Stan could be Toolshed.

It had been Wendy's idea to, almost at the last minute, swing around and pick Red up while Toolshed's half of the team was on the way back, and her presence was probably the only reason Mysterion looked even slightly relieved when he entered the room and removed his hood.

"Hey," the iconic hero greeted all of us as his sister took her seat at the long meeting table, "so, guys, we're dealing with something pretty fuckin' weird this summer."

"Figured that kinda went without saying," said Clyde, who was currently stationed at the whiteboard at the head of the table. "Dude, that attack came out of fucking nowhere."

"Yeah, and I have no idea where they're going, either," Kenny grumbled, joining Clyde at the head of the table. "Ike, you get anything?"

"Timmy and I are going back through the video feed right now," Ike said. I glanced over at where the two technicians were stationed. Ike, always on the move, stood bent over the shiny white tablet—complete with a red Canadian maple leaf decal at the center—that had just last year replaced his previous laptop as the primary source of all of our digital League files, and his black eyes darted back and forth as the fingers of his right hand hovered over the touch screen.

"Timmah!" Timmy exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

"What's up?" asked Karen, removing her mask and giving the two a hopeful stare.

Ike's face lit up a little, and he tapped the screen. "Daaaaamn, guys," he commented. "The hell was up with that helicopter, eh?"

_"Eh?"_ Karen mocked him across the table. Ike just shot her a smirk before looking back at the screen in front of him.

"Care to share with the class?" asked Kenny. "Guys, what've you got?"

"Well, a decal on the helicopter for starters," said Ike. Timmy grinned and plugged an HDMI cable into Ike's tablet, then wheeled himself over to the main computer behind where the two usually sat to turn the overhead screens on.

The tech at the base was something that never ceased to fascinate me. Then again, we were on Token's parents' property… we were pretty fortunate to have access to the good stuff. Over the past couple of years, Karen, Ike and Timmy had apparently made it their primary project to give the meeting room a facelift. Clyde and Bebe's filing cabinets still lined the far left-hand wall, and on either side was a cork board for current cases. Kyle and Red's letters and envelopes were tacked up on one of them now, as was a little slip of paper Ike had explained to all of us earlier was a ticket he'd been sent in the mail. Rounding out the findings were two posters, one from Clyde and one from Craig, which the two had found earlier, being plastered around town by Ginger Separatist activists.

Ike and Timmy had indeed found a decal: on the tail of the helicopter was a broken outline of a circle, divided into six small pieces of the round border. Within the border were three rows of three filled in red dots, not unlike those on the Infra-Reds' arm bands. As methodical as the design appeared on camera, something about the design still felt archaic, and made me shiver. Timmy printed out two copies, and Ike ran one over to pin up onto the cork board next to the poster.

The poster itself was simple in design. A black 11-by-17 sheet of thick paper declared in big, Depression-era-style letters: _CARNIVAL. Infernal Majestic Management. Details to Come, Six by Six. Circle up, now, step right in._ If the GSM and whoever the heck that Management company was meant to shock with that poster, they had certainly succeeded.

"Thanks, guys. Okay, so first order of business…" Kenny took up the marker and wrote at the top of the whiteboard, _First GSM Fight._ He ran a line under that and began his bullet points. The first thing he wrote down was, _Infra-Reds._ "We've got ourselves a new fuckin' group to deal with."

"And they have a helicopter," Ike mumbled, still hunched over his iPad.

"Yup." Kenny wrote _WTF HELICOPTER_ underneath the first bullet point.

"Oh, my God, really?" Kyle asked when he read that, trying not to laugh.

"Dude, tell me that wasn't the first thing that went through your mind when that thing appeared," Kenny mock-argued.

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Right after _holy shit,_ I guess you're right."

"Sweet. And Ike, man, thanks for pulling that decal."

"Huh," Craig commented.

"What?" Clyde asked.

Craig shook his head. "Nothin'."

"Did you just think of something?"

"Nope. It's not related."

Clyde and Kenny stared Craig down, while Ike and Timmy both hovered on standby to add more to the tablet. Craig merely shrugged. "Decal reminded me of tattoo reminded me of this other thing that's totally not related to this at all," said Craig bluntly. "I'll tell ya later. Keep going."

Kenny and Clyde looked unconvinced, but pressed onward. "Right," Kenny said, clearing his throat. "What else've we got?"

"More photos," Bebe offered.

"Take the floor," Kenny nodded to her. Bebe smiled, glad to be acknowledged, and stood to join the two already stationed at the computers. Clyde followed her with his eyes and gave her an encouraging grin.

"This was the first visual," said Bebe. She plugged a retractable USB cable into her lemon-yellow iPhone and nodded to Timmy to call up the image in question.

A full-scale, if blurry, photograph of a man in the tight black GSM uniform appeared on the HD screen overhead; underneath was a text from Clyde which read, _Guess I'm working tonight._

The way the Infra-Reds had chosen to outfit themselves was interesting: the skintight clothes worked well for their mobility and a bit of identity concealing, but their faces were mostly exposed. No caps or full masks… just those goggles.

"D'you think those goggles do anything?" I wondered. The group gave me their attention; I hit on subjects like that so rarely it took me a second to gather my thoughts before I could continue.

"How d'you mean?" Clyde prompted me when I didn't keep speaking right off.

"I mean," I started, "w-well, they glow, right? Bebe, I think callin' 'em Infra-Reds is good, cuz I'm guessing that's how they see through those things. But, like, why? You know?"

"Keep it rolling," said Kenny. He spun his left hand in a circle as he nodded and wrote on the whiteboard in reflection of my idea. _Infra visuals?_ was the new bullet point underneath _WTF HELICOPTER._

"I'm just kinda… I mean, think about the Cult," I said, softening my voice somewhat, though inadvertently. Everyone at the table either nodded or completely froze. Karen glanced at Kenny before giving me her attention again. Red looked at Kenny and did not look away. "They had hoods on their cloaks, y'know? They hid their whole faces. It's almost like the GSM is just _begging_ for us to learn their identities."

"Who'd do that, though?" Kyle wondered.

Cartman grunted and leaned back in his chair. "Scott Tenorman," he said blankly.

Stan and Kyle let out a synchronized heavy sigh and leaned forward on the table in the same manner, but it was only Stan who said, "Care to elaborate, dude?"

"Yeah," Kenny added. "Cartman, if there's _anything at all_ you know about Tenorman… I mean, like, apparently he keeps sending letters to your mom—"

Cartman merely rolled his eyes. He was soaking in the attention while it was granted to him, but for the most part, he appeared dismissive. Which was strange. I had a feeling he was hiding more, though I hated that I could still call him so well. It wasn't too hard to guess, though. If there was one person on Earth that Cartman cared about almost as much as himself, it was his mother. She provided for him, she encouraged (and enabled) him, she gave him an almost overwhelming sense of security.

So the fact that he was not reacting much to her essentially receiving threat letters on a schedule from the son of the man who'd also fathered Eric Cartman himself was… unnerving at least. He had to have been hiding his true concern. The look on Kenny's face told me that the leader of the League agreed.

"Seriously?" Cartman said with a mild shrug. "I don't see those letters. Ever. Mom always throws 'em away."

"Raid her trash, then," Token suggested. "Dude, I'd go through my parents' discard piles if I thought there was incriminating shit in there."

"She shreds 'em."

"Oh, yeah, that'd be a problem."

"And you never thought to tell us this why?" Kenny growled.

"Because."

"Not good enough!" Kyle snapped. He stood, slamming his hands on the table, which got all of our heads to turn. Stan set a hand on his back to try to get him to sit, but Kyle wouldn't have it. Interestingly enough, the one focusing the most attention on his outburst was Red, and I understood why. Red and Kyle were still, at the moment, the only ones of us who had received letters from the GSM. "If another one comes, _inter-fucking-cept it!"_

"Kyle," Kenny warned sternly.

Kyle groaned and rubbed his temples. "Sorry, I'm just… I'm just still really pissed about…"

"Everything?" Cartman jabbed at him.

Kyle flipped Cartman off with one hand and kept rubbing his temple with the other. "Skipping the part where I still want to blame you for some of this," he said, "the main thing that's getting to me right now is that radio broadcast. As if this Carnival shit wasn't enough to try to wrap our heads around…"

My heart skipped when Kyle mentioned the broadcast. Prior to the Infra-Red attack that evening, every station, on every radio in town, had been hacked, right down to satellite and internet radio, and a voice had given a PSA. "So everyone did hear that?" Kenny said, writing _Radio interference_ as his next bullet-point. "Not just me?"

"Loud and clear," Karen confirmed.

"You guys heard him call me out?" Kenny asked.

"Y-you?" I stammered. "I'm sorry, Kenny, I—well, I heard something different."

"Yeah, dude," Stan said. "Maybe I missed something, but… do you mean after the general 'stay tuned' bit?"

Kenny's face paled. "Yeah…" he said, looking nervous. His eyes shifted to Red for a second, then back to the general table, only to go back to Red. "Baby, you hear anything?"

Red nodded tersely. "I heard someone saying 'consider the offer,'" she said in a near-whisper.

"I heard 'mind over matter if you oppose us,' or something like that," Kyle spoke up nervously.

"Wait, seriously?" Stan nearly yelped.

"Ike, you getting these?" Kenny checked in. When Ike nodded and typed away at his tablet, Kenny encouraged Stan to continue. "What'd you hear?"

Stan blanched. "I dunno, man, it was like a riddle or something. 'Which tool opens the urn?'"

"I heard a riddle, too!" Token said, astonished. "Something about, 'what's worth the gamble' or…"

"That voice used my name," Kenny informed us. "Well, he called out Mysterion directly, and mentioned my curse. Which I've broken."

My chest tightened, and I stared down at my hands. I did not want to speak aloud the words that I had heard. Luckily, in all the din that then erupted once everybody got talking about the fact that the voice on the radio had somehow made sure that each of us had gotten a different message, I was not asked directly what words I had heard. It was confirmed through recollections of the voice that we had all heard the same person, so it had to have been a recording, we figured… a very, very precise one.

Conversation then turned to the posters, and to the ticket that Ike had received in the mail. The Carnival was some kind of front. Whether or not an event ended up happening was up for debate, but it was something we needed to investigate, as a team.

The very last thing to come out in the open before the meeting could draw to a close was Cartman's recollection of what the radio voice had said to him, which were words that had been lost during the initial discussion. "How specific was it?" Clyde wanted to know when Cartman wove a long-winded story about how he was quite sure that his version of the broadcast was most important. Idiot.

"Here's what I heard," said Cartman, almost smugly. "'You're the main attraction, Coon.' Oh, and then I think it was, 'We're waiting,' or somethin', but it got all crackled out."

"Oh, God," Red started whispering under her breath. "Oh, God, this is getting really weird. Ugh…" Wendy and Bebe were instantly with her, providing support on either side, while Karen cast her a sympathetic look across the table. Kenny gave her a loving nod, probably to signify that he would talk more quietly with her later, then turned back to the whiteboard.

"All right, guys," said Kenny, now that all the evidence had been presented, printed, and put on display. "Here's what I wanna do."

"Recon?" Clyde grinned. "Add to the data pile—"

"And start up a big ol' game plan?" Stan added. The two former football teammates nodded to each other in what I can only describe as an acknowledged fist bump. (This was confirmed by Bebe shooting Kyle a look and making the 'they're nuts' circular motion with one index finger hovering to the side of her head.)

"You got it," said Kenny—all business, and with no time for turning business into sport. "Tomorrow night, everyone. A-team: Clyde and Craig, you guys see if you can follow that poster trail on the East side of town, and covering the West side'll be B-team of Cartman—"

"Fuckin' _B-team."_

Kenny pressed on. "Cartman, and Butters."

"The _fuck?"_

Kenny shot him an awful glare. "Do you _mind?"_ he spat, playing the strict teacher to Cartman's bickering kindergartener.

"Ech. Do _you?"_

"You and Butters are on recon together. Suck it the hell up or you're on fucking probation."

"Oooh, _pro-baaaaaa-tion."_

"Moving _on,"_ Kenny growled. I gave Cartman a glare of my own; the idiot wasn't impressed. "Token," Kenny continued, "and Kyle, I know you guys both have other obligations or jobs tomorrow night, so Stan and Wendy, you're on backup." The two nodded amicably, and I saw Kyle try not to react. Stan and Wendy were, to my understanding, pretty good friends, still, when it came down to it. Wendy had even spoken to me once about how she felt that, between me and Stan, she was 'collecting brothers.' I kind of assumed Kyle was on the same level as Stan with her, but, then again, I didn't pry or yearn to know too much.

"Ike," Kenny went on, "you're here. Me and Karen'll do another sweep of the asylum after I go pick up whatever it is Henrietta's got for me. Stan and Wendy, start out at Tenth Circle. I trust you guys alone if you've gotta split from there. Same goes for you two," he added, gesturing to Clyde and Craig.

"Uh, hi?" Cartman complained, lifting a hand a couple inches off the table.

"Nothin' against you, dude," Kenny said to placate him. "Other than the whole… _you might be a target and need immediate backup_ thing. If you heard 'main attraction' on the radio, that's probably as good as you getting a fucking letter. It's just—look, I need you to keep an eye on each other. Okay? Butters, man, I gotta say, we're glad to have your help the past couple years, but…"

"It's fine, I understand."

I wasn't trusted alone yet. I didn't blame Kenny for that. I didn't blame anyone for that. I hadn't been in the League very long, and even then, my involvement came and went just as much as my days as Marjorine did.

Because, well…

Marjorine was the hero.

She'd saved me back in middle school; she'd saved and saved me again, so as far as I was concerned, she should be the one fighting for justice… not the guy who'd tried to crush the world. Marjorine could wear a mask over makeup and still be every bit me. I just couldn't go through with potential relapses, or the waking dreams I still sometimes had about how badly I'd let myself go as Chaos.

Many things that had been a big part of my life were people or concepts I had now abandoned. It had been four years since I had spoken with either of my parents… and on and off, I would wonder if perhaps that was the only truly good thing I'd done for myself. It had taken me seventeen years to work up the nerve to leave home, and when I'd finally done it, it had been a last straw situation with Chaos, as well.

Professor Chaos was a name the town had once spoken as frequently as Mysterion, but these days he was hardly even a whisper. I had wanted it that way. Chaos had gone from an outlet for me to work out my frustrations and take on the things that scared me into a victim of terribly dark circumstance. He'd been a part of me born of a product of a weak will, and no matter how much I tried to strengthen him, I got pulled down. Down, down, further and further into the worst of my own thoughts, until I'd attempted to drive mad or kill many of the people I counted as friends.

The friends who helped to save me. I'd gone down the path of Chaos on my own, but the guys in the League had understood me to be a help to them at times. But when I discovered my own _Necronomicon,_ my supposed partner in crime, General Disarray, had silently taken over, offered me up to lose my own sanity as a price to wake others like Cthulhu, and ultimately died in R'lyeh. Which was a fate I knew I'd have suffered had I strayed just one step further.

From then on, I had left Chaos behind. I had not died in R'lyeh, but I told myself that Chaos had. I didn't need him anymore: I wanted to repair things.

So I created someone new.

I'd always been my own little trinity: myself (Butters), Marjorine (the female me, who I'd kept up pretty consistently since eighth grade), and Professor Chaos. I didn't feel very balanced without that third identity, so when I asked Kenny if I could stay on in the League, when I started going over ideas for alter egos with Wendy, I came up with another side to Marjorine.

To combat Professor Chaos, I called her Agent Harmony. My personal agent of change. Someone who could heal and do good. I kept on the defensive for the most part, and was a self-appointed (and much-needed, the guys often stressed) medical aide. Harmony was the opposite of Chaos.

And yet my personal life was still all sorts of scrambled up.

Oh, things were fine living with Wendy… I had one more year renting a room from her parents—who are the sweetest people, let me tell you—and options to travel a little after I graduated, but if there was one thing not even Harmony could repair, it was this stupid fight I was having with Eric Cartman.

At the end of the meeting, though, I was given some hope. Once most of the others had dispersed to get out of uniform, Kenny took me aside by the cork board for a more personal check-in. "Hey, man," he said, patting my back a couple times. "How's it going—you ready for a recon mission?"

"Well, sure I'm ready," I assured him. "I'm really feeling like I'm on the team, now, after tonight."

"Good for you. No slip-ups, right?"

I shook my head. "No more Chaos."

"Hmm. Yeah," Kenny said after a second. "And, hey, about that guy…" He ticked his head back toward where Cartman stood arguing with Wendy about something (most likely trivial). "You get the feeling he's being—"

"Silent for a reason?" I offered.

"I was going to say stubborn, but you're right, too," Kenny agreed. Red called for him; Kenny called over that he'd be right back, then got my attention in order to say before he could leave, "Listen up. You've got a great name, Harmony. I hope you can put it to use. You understand?"

"I sure do."

And I did. I had to make sure that we maintained some kind of League status quo while we were still in the breadcrumbs portion of our summer mission. So maybe I was playing the part of a glorified babysitter; I didn't much care. As long as I could have a hand in League success, I would do whatever it took.

I'd do whatever I needed to do, in order to finally be 'good.' In order to stay ahead, and not lag into the pit of Chaos again.

– – –

I woke in the middle of the night from a horrible dream.

It wasn't even a dream so much as my brain playing back an earlier part of the day. To the broadcast. To the words that I had not told Kenny, Clyde, or the rest of the League that I had heard: _"You, dear, dear Agent of Harmony… don't you know that control demands disorder?_

_"You can rebuild."_

Chills went down my spine again as I thought about it. I knew what it was talking about, of course. The Tower. That damn Tower that had helped me on my downward spiral into true, terrible Chaos.

Unable to sleep, I rolled out of bed, pulled on a thin blue sweatshirt, and slipped out of my room and down the stairs to the kitchen. Wendy's parents were very kind to share their kitchen with me; I'd gotten rather good at cooking meals, since I insisted upon doing so in exchange for having to pay hardly anything for the food they provided. I'd felt guilty to eat more than my share for the first couple of years, but nowadays a midnight snack or two was never something I bypassed if I felt I needed it.

I stuck two slices of squishy multigrain bread into the toaster oven and heaved a sigh as I leaned against the counter to wait for it to crisp and brown. _"You can rebuild."_ Not the Tower. Not that pillar of evil, no. Not Chaos. No, I was done, I wasn't going back; I couldn't. I couldn't.

Maybe I could twist the words, I thought. Make them allude to something I could stand to rebuild.

A friendship, maybe.

My eyes stung somewhat.

Eric Cartman hadn't said two words to me directly during that meeting. He'd barely acknowledged me as a teammate during the attack after the broadcast. I wasn't even sure if it was his fault or mine anymore. I'd stayed angry for a real long time. Short enough to still not want to call him by his first name again, but long enough for us to maybe be on speaking terms again.

Senior year of high school, and the greater part of freshman year of college, we'd still been tight. Oh—yes… yes, I remembered. It was his fault. And I was sick of his abusive little games. I'd tried to bring balance into my life by adopting harmony as a very literal force of the actions I now took. It wasn't very comforting that I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job of that.

The toaster oven beeped. Slowly, methodically, I removed the toast, slid butter along the surfaces of both slices, and sat down at the square kitchen table to snack alone with my thoughts.

Cartman was being kind of weird lately. I wanted to be concerned. I really did. Part of me would always feel some concern for him. For the guy that had occasionally shown concern for me. Prom came to mind. Four years had passed, now, and I was still thinking about that stupid dance. Well… about what had happened to me during the event.

About the porch of the Community Center, about Wendy cheering me up in the bathroom, about what Craig saw, about a big set of hands I fought to hold, about the most sincere apology I'd ever heard in my life…

My brain stopped short when I heard footsteps. I knew right away it was Wendy, so I didn't feel too nervous. I welcomed her in, and gave her a tired wave as I bit into my toast.

"Hey, hey," Wendy said, mussing up my hair before she slid into a seat beside me. She wiped dripping beads from the side of her glass of water, took a sip, then gave me a tired but sweet smile. "Can't sleep?"

"Not really. You?"

Wendy shrugged, rather regally. "Not really," she admitted. "Some summer vacation, huh?" We weren't even midway through May yet; I hoped we could relax at least a little before August. I mean, heck, we have our last year of college coming up."

"No kidding," I tried to grin. "So why can't you sleep?"

"Lots on my mind," said Wendy. "How about you?"

"Kinda the same."

"Yeah? Like what?" Wendy wanted to know.

"I mean… GSM stuff, and all," I told her. "So I tried to get thinking about normal stuff, but it's way too late for that kind of thing, so my head just started going into its stupid playback mode…"

Wendy knew what I meant. We'd talk about high school a lot when we got together, even though we had plenty of college stories to share. It was out of a want and need to remember how far our roots stretched; how firm the foundation of our friendship was. We could always bet that high school or even middle school would come up at least once in any conversation we had. And this time, she nailed the topic right off after I repeated, "Really… really stupid playback…"

"Oh, honey, you're not still thinking about prom…?" Wendy prompted me. She reached over the table and took a gentle hold of my wrist. No use fighting it. Dang prom, wreckin' up my social life for the next few years for having been such an odd—though oddly memorable—evening. One evening, and things had all seemed changed, and balanced, and good. Only to all fall apart in the end, as some good things do.

"Jesus," I mumbled, covering my face with my hands. "I should be over it, Wendy, I really should."

"I thought you were dating again," Wendy said optimistically. I did have a tendency to be less backward-glancing when I was in a relationship. "That girl… Jo? Jordan?"

"No," I sighed, "we broke up."

"Oh… Butters, I'm sorry," Wendy offered.

I managed a smile. "No, it's fine. We're still friends, it's all good. Man, I just… two people, Wendy. I've dated two people from my college and I'm still being a total idiot."

"If it's any consolation," Wendy said nervously, "I'm still not over Token."

"Let's just marry each other," I laughed.

"If we're still clinging and clawing when we're thirty, _please,"_ Wendy said with a tiny giggle.

Wendy and I had a deep understanding and respect for each other, but we were, we'd both agreed, almost too tight to date each other. Plus, she liked protests and publications and getting her voice out there… I liked being who I was in my own quiet way. My ex-girlfriend—a girl I'd met in college by the name of Jordan Kowalski… and when Cartman had heard her name he laughed in my face and sent me stupid Polack spite over Facebook for a while—had liked that, and was a good match for me for a while, until the mutual breakup. That was the thing about Wendy… I didn't want to hurt with the breakup we both knew would happen if we ever dated. So we just went right on being honorary siblings and safety nets.

After we'd sat in silence a little while, I ventured to ask, "Any chance of you and Token starting it up again?"

"Oh," Wendy half-lamented, "I don't know. I wish we could, hon… so bad. I just… I was the one who fucked up. He needs time. How about you? You okay?"

"I kinda don't like being single," I admitted.

"Is Cartman single again?" Wendy ventured.

"Cartman's an asshole who is never, ever going to admit he's always been _at least_ bi-curious and who's never, ever gonna like anyone as much as he likes himself, so I'm done trying," I grunted.

In her sweet, collected way, Wendy smiled, scooted over, and placed her hand on my back, where she rubbed a little circle. I sighed and murmured an apology. She'd probably heard me rail about these things hundreds of times by now.

Wendy was so well aware of my history, it was pointless to bring it up. I'm not the luckiest person on the planet, and maybe it's partially because of that fact that I enjoy hearing about and encouraging other people's happiness. Wendy's in particular—I did love that girl. She was the best form of family I'd ever known.

Because Wendy believed in me, something that not even my own parents had done. I mean, for crying out loud, my father—my _bi-curious _father, I'll add—sent me to a camp to try to 'fix' me and make me straight, before I was even ten years old. My roommate at the camp, a nervous wreck under a pouf of dark blonde hair named Bradley, had almost killed himself in front of me before both of us were given leave.

I'd told Wendy right off when Bradley re-entered my life in college. It was funny when I saw him again, all grown up and sure of himself… I ended up head-over-heels, and was enamored when we finally started going out. We were easy roommates for the first two years of school, and dated for three-quarters of that time. In the end, though, he'd shown his true colors and accused Marjorine of being a 'fantasy' of mine. So I'd called him an ignorant bastard and walked out. It still made me sad sometimes to think of him and how we'd ended up, but it was necessary.

Then there was Jordan, a friend of my current roommates' that I'd met at a party. I had two roommates at school now, both passing acquaintances from high school—Sally Turner and Heidi Turner; no relation as far as I knew… Heidi was Kyle's first ex and was still kind of weird around him, even after so many years of being broken up, which unfortunately was one of the reasons I hadn't ended up hanging with the guys that much. Jordan was a nice breath of fresh air for me. We went back to her place after the party and stayed up talking and watching old cartoons over a shared bottle of white wine, then got to tipsily baking cookies and ultimately, in her words, eating each other once the cookies came out burnt. Later that week, we were a couple. She even called me 'Leopold.' No one had ever called me by my real name before, so we let that be her thing, and I liked it. We broke up amicably after she admitted she was more comfortable being polyamorous (and I'm not… I mean, heck, one person outside myself is all I can handle at a time), and remained friends, which was nice… but it still left me single.

So now here I was again, uncomfortable with my on-the-market status, back home, and being a damn fool for clinging to what I _thought_ I'd had at prom. Junior prom. Wendy had been a vision. I voted for her and Token for the royalty—and, gosh, they sure looked it; he went all out for her—but Clyde and Bebe had won… which I'd kind of expected, and was ultimately glad that they had: that was when Clyde had proposed. Four years, they'd been engaged. I was jealous, but too happy for both of them to care about how I yearned for just one returned 'I love you' here and there.

Cartman hadn't given me that, but he'd at least put up with me when I blackmailed him into being my date for that dance. So maybe he'd hung by the buffet table for most of the night. So I was mostly just enjoying myself with the girls and gushing over Wendy and Bebe and wondering how the heck Stan had convinced Kyle, notorious for hating school dances, to go. I didn't care. I had what I wanted. I had the excuse to say that I'd had at least one date with the guy I'd stupidly fawned over since I was a kid.

I should have accepted it as puppy love and moved on, but I didn't. I pushed. I pushed and pushed and pushed and tried so damn hard to win. Eric—I'd still called him Eric, then—and I had been at odds for years. I did almost anything he'd ask me to, since, don't ask me why, I cared about him so much. I thought he must have been kind of lonely… kind of like me. When I started throwing my own punches, both figuratively as myself and literally as Professor Chaos, he'd started to push harder. All that ultimately worked itself into a friendly rivalry, and, on my part, an almost annoying crush.

Wendy had told me over and over before prom to tell Eric how I felt, so at that stupid event, I'd pushed him as far as I figured he could go: I'd kissed him—grabbed that guy and just plain full-on kissed him. That jerk kissed right back, and for a little over a year he let me keep doing it. Were we dating? Who knows. If we weren't, him dumping me (as a friend or as a date, it really, honestly didn't matter) by denying he knew me was kind of a wakeup call. Then I'd gotten with Bradley, and he went right on being a royal dick to me, and pushed and pushed and pushed again until I snapped and stopped calling him Eric.

The thing was…

I'm pretty sure Cartman missed Chaos. The glares he gave me, as himself and as the Coon, were clues enough for that. When we were fighting the Old Ones in R'lyeh (well, _they,_ the League… I'd been kind of on the problem side, then), I had saved his life, and he'd told me he owed me one. And by 'me,' I was still quite sure that he meant Chaos. I'd never cashed in on it. The Coon owed Chaos a favor.

Cartman owed me nothing. Which was kind of what I was getting. I missed having him as a friend, though, and Wendy knew that.

She knew that, so I didn't have to say a word.

I did, however, ask her a question.

"Hey, Wendy?"

"What's up, Butters?"

"D'you really think Harmony was a good idea?"

Wendy shifted in her seat again, and turned my head so that I was facing her directly. Her eyes were bright and sad all at once. I wanted to ask her more about Token. I felt awful… Wendy went to school in California; we stayed in contact all the time, over the phone, online, and on vacations, but sometimes I felt that I missed the really important things. I missed her—her sisterly advice and our friendly banter. I just wanted that girl to be happy.

"Here's the thing," Wendy said to me, when she'd made me look directly at her so that she knew I caught every word she spoke. "Harmony is right for you only if you think she is. If you're having other thoughts, you can still turn things around."

I shook my head. "I stopped being Chaos," I affirmed. "I don't want to mess up that bad again."

"So give Harmony a real try," said Wendy. "This is your chance, you know. You do want to stay in the League, right?"

"Y-yeah," I nodded.

"So this is what I think. You want to be in the League? Then give it your all, sweetie. Commit to what you know you can commit to. If harmony is the force you want to fight for, then stick with being Agent Harmony. You know I'll be the first one to agree that you pushed Professor Chaos a little far, but that's the thing about being in the League—we're _friends._ No matter how you want to be involved, don't lose sight of the fact that we're friends, and we're here for each other. All of us."

She really did know how to make me feel better. I thanked her, coupling my words with a tight hug, and followed her back upstairs once I'd disposed of the dregs of my midnight snack. Wendy linked her arm with mine and lay her head on my shoulder as she walked me down to my room. When I glanced down at her, I saw a faraway look on her face that she did not show very often. Wendy was deep in thought about an issue she rarely brought up on her own, so I took the liberty.

"Hey, Wendy?" I said, cautiously so as not to shock her out of her thoughts.

"Hmm?"

"You sure you're okay?" I wondered. "I know what you mean about all of us being friends, and all… a-and I think I'm gonna do my best to get back on speaking terms with Cartman, but what about you and Token? I really hope you two are okay."

Wendy sighed. "It'll be fine, Butters, we might work it out, we might not," she said modestly. "We're partners in the League, so… I-I don't know. Sorry if I'm projecting anything."

"Don't be sorry, honey, I just want you to be okay."

"You're awfully sweet." We'd made it to my door, where Wendy stood straight and hugged me goodnight. "Thanks for being my on-call brother, Butters. We'll both find something soon."

"We sure will, Wendy," I agreed, hugging her in return.

At least, I hoped so.

– – –

I did enjoy being Agent Harmony. I liked going through the motions of applying my makeup and brushing out my hair as I always did on days when I felt like Marjorine, and then going the extra step to put my hair up in a twisty bun, secured with bobby pins just behind the army-green nurse's cap I wore as part of my uniform. Green was still my vigilante color, I couldn't deviate all that much.

Besides… I was about balancing myself out, these days. Keep things even, keep the peace. What better name to keep the city feeling safe than Harmony, I thought. And if I wanted to continue healing—healing the city; wounds; old scars that I myself may have caused—then I'd heal.

I wanted to work _with_ the team instead of _against_ them. I had had a partner before, but even before I found out he'd been using me, our union was mostly based on necessity, the simple fact that each of us was physically incapable of executing our plans if we'd been a one-man army. This time, I wanted a group of people who I could undoubtedly trust. And, hopefully, who would trust me in return, though I knew that would take a lot of work on my part first. Still, most of all, I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. Instead of fighting for selfish reasons, I wanted to fight for a common cause, one that would benefit not just me, but others as well. Do a little good in the world, you know? Positive energy and all that.

When I'd decided all of this, I'd gone to the person who I knew would be immediately supportive and encouraging – Wendy. I gave her all my reasons for wanting to make the change, and she was nothing but kind words and uplifting hugs. Then, she'd squealed with delight at the prospect of designing an outfit.

We set to work right away. Keeping with the theme of healing, and fulfilling the role of the team medic, we'd decided to base the design off a nurse's uniform, circa-World War II to give it the soldier feel as well. A button-down green dress, cinched at the waist with a utility belt and opening out to a knee-length pleated skirt with a few useful pockets—that was the basic outline we'd chosen. Wendy had been the one to suggest I keep a cape, not unlike a rain cape, and still green in color, draped over my shoulders. (When we'd added it, both of us had made the obvious, _it kinda hides the fact that I'm completely and understandably flat,_ comment, too.) While most of my arsenal was based around my theme, I did have a little secret: my thick green gloves were, in a slight nod to Chaos, sewn around sets of metal knuckle caps. I wore spandex shorts under the skirt, and high green socks under brown lace-up boots to complete the outfit.

I was proud of it, at least; so was Wendy. She and Karen had welcomed me, as Marjorine, onto the team wholeheartedly, saying there was always a need for more girlish energy around on the field. The guys all respected the fact that I was always quick with first aid, too, and in that respect had given Agent Harmony the nod to be the new probationary field member.

I took Kenny's words to heart as I dressed and set out that evening. Put my name to use. Agent Harmony. Be just that, I told myself: _do_ just that. Promote and fight for harmony. Leave Disarray to the dead and gone dimension in which he'd met his end; leave Chaos to my convoluted past.

Start looking forward, be a positive member of the League.

Which, I've gotta say, is _really hard to do_ when your mission partner is being a dick and sighing every five seconds because he was on B-team and not the one going to the asylum to fight Scott Tenorman head-to-head. I knew he wanted it. I knew that the Coon could not wait to sink his talons into Tenorman, but I had the feeling that there were plenty of reasons why Tenorman himself hadn't yet reared his Ginger head. There truly was much more at play here than just a Movement, than just some kind of threatening activity.

We had to find out what that Carnival was, why the Gingers were using it, and what that Infernal Majestic Management company truly was—if it (or they, perhaps) had anything to do with the radio, the helicopter, and the GSM in its present insurrection.

The Coon and I were stationed on top of a five-storey apartment building, which looked out over a street full of businesses and office buildings… a fair bet for a place that activists might try to slap up posters to be noticed. Our building was on a street corner, too; far below was an alleyway to the right that emptied out closer to where Craig and Mosquito were stationed, and then two plain old two-way streets, the traffic lights flashing red on all sides to indicate that the time of day was too late for go, slow and stop to be of much major concern.

While the lights flashed a metronome, the Coon groaned and sighed out of tempo. I glared over at him. He'd taken one side of the building to watch the horizontal cross street, while I stood near a large silver duct that smelled of a hundred laundry dryer sheets, watching the vertical cross street. But when he made a scene, I couldn't help but try to call him out for it. So I kept on staring, hoping that it would shut him up, and that maybe we'd accomplish something that evening.

Sure enough, he caught me glaring. "What?" he hissed out.

_"What?"_ I snapped back, keeping my eyes out mostly on the streets. It was such a stupidly quiet night. We were both obsessing over the same thing for a second: Mysterion set this up on purpose.

I knew what everyone else thought. I knew that the Coon and I had a lot we had to get the hell over in order to operate as teammates again. I just wanted it to come from him. Because he was a jerk. The end.

"Move over," said the Coon. "Nothin' fuckin' happening out there anyway, go patrol the other side of the roof."

"You're just as capable of moving as I am," I bit back.

"I chose this spot first."

"What are you, eight? Shut up," I snapped.

"You're being just as much of a dick about this as I am," he grumbled.

"At least you admit it," I pointed out.

The Coon whirled, and grabbed me by the front of my uniform. I'm pretty sure this was the first time he'd forced eye contact on me in at least a year. It had gotten to the point at which I'd nearly forgotten that his eyes were brown. A kind of hazel-y brown, that shifted character as much as he did, that, like the man himself, had the potential to be something really nice and maybe even attractive if they didn't otherwise make you feel like shit. No, sometimes I'd forget about those eyes, and sometimes even assume that the Coon's eyes were indeed yellow, animal yellow, as they had been in R'lyeh.

Sharp, focused, like the nocturnal creature from which he'd taken his name; his eyes were indeed that, color aside, and though they could not pierce through and glow in the dark as they had been able to do in that other dimension, they sure could burn.

I hadn't thought to ask Cartman if he hated me. At the height of my own utter abhorrence of him, yes, I'd stopped calling him by his first name, and he was still holding a grudge against me for that. But hate me? I had no idea. He was a hard guy to read. And did I hate him? A little, still, I guessed. I hated the fact that he refused to talk, for one thing.

And I really hated what he said next.

"God fucking dammit, Harmony, shut up if we aren't gonna actually do our fucking job tonight!" he snapped. Not that part. This part: "Sometimes, swear to God, that name pisses me off, you know. At least Chaos made sense."

I grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him in the gut, then threw him aside. "Shut the fuck up, Coon!" I hollered at him. "We're supposed to be on the same team, here! I'm done with Chaos, and you know that, and you need to get over it!"

The Coon spun where he'd fallen, righted himself on his feet, then darted behind me and held me in a head lock, his thick arms choking me just from their size more than the force he put behind his grip. "Get over it?" he scoffed. "Get _over_ it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, that's not something somebody just _gets over."_

"What the fuck are you _talking_ about?" I yelled, gasping for breath. Even at the height of our relationship (or whatever it was, we had never really given it a name), there were still times that even I had trouble discerning what Eric Cartman meant with his convoluted personal logic. And, since we'd been out of sorts, those moments had only increased. "If you're still holding a grudge against Chaos, well that's too bad, Coon, cause he's not around anymore. I've changed!" To drive home my point, though perhaps negating it a little as well, I elbowed him in the chest.

With the Coon the one sputtering for breath now, I was able to free myself. Stepping back, I held my arms out to my sides, exposing myself to him against the light of the full moon. "Harmony means balance, Coon," I said, strongly as I could. "I told you a long time ago and I'll tell you again now, I'm here to repair things. Chaos did too much damage, and I'm gonna serve like this till I clean all his shit up, so don't you make me have to wipe the floor with you, too. Maybe I'm doing too much, or maybe I'm not doing enough, but I'm taking strides to make things better, and if you can't see that, then you really do suck as a teammate. You do know that we're the ones holding everyone back, right?"

"Shut up," the Coon snapped, coughing a little.

"No!" I hollered. "No, I won't shut up until you say something that you and I both know makes sense! There's something evil out there that you and I can help do something about, but if we don't suck it up and act like civil human beings, and not just human beings, but _heroes,_ as we say we are, then the League is gonna move on without us. You get that, right? I wanna keep serving and I wanna keep doing good, okay? Don't you fuck that up for me, Coon, don't you _dare fuck that up for me!"_

The hamsters somehow started spinning that rusty old wheel inside his brain again at that point, and the Coon grinned. He folded his arms across his chest, gave me a look over, and said triumphantly, "There you are."

"What?" I wondered, still not comprehending his thought process.

"Just sayin', you're not so different after all."

"From what?" I guessed. "Chaos?"

The Coon just shrugged. Then, glancing around a little, he stepped forward and held out a hand. Okay, I was really not expecting that. For him to be the one to so quickly initiate the truce. Then I looked down. "I'm not shaking your hand, idiot, you're just gonna scratch me with those claws," I said, calling his bluff. And then he'd laugh about it.

"You're wearing metal gloves, bitch."

"You'd still try."

"Fine!" The Coon tossed his hands up in the air.

"But do we have a truce?" I hollered as he turned his back on me.

"Yeah, whatever."

"Do we have a _truce?"_

"Yes, a'edy!" he barked, whipping his head around to look at me.

I stared him down for a minute. I did miss our League interactions from time to time. It was one of the best ways we'd ever played off of each other. His incorrigible stubbornness and my talents for trapping him by using his strengths against him. His weird way of being able to untangle himself all the same. That was what the Coon and Chaos had had, and, sure, I was done being Chaos in order to atone for plunging half the town (or more, let's be honest, not that that was an achievement) into insanity and nearly killing myself in the process, but no. He was right. At night, in uniform, I still had the same strengths I always had.

What I did not tell him was that, not too long ago, I had nearly brought Chaos back. That I had been so fucking angry at him, at Cartman, that I had been so fucking angry at myself and at everything wrong with my life that I had nearly plunged myself back into that old mode of thought. That the world was out to get me. That I had to strike back first.

But I hadn't. I chose instead to continue working toward my goal of reparations, of striving for balance instead of anarchy. Either way, I was fighting for something.

So maybe I was a fighter. Maybe that was what the costume was all about now. Just don something that gave me the courage to fight back in some way. I just didn't want to be in a fight with someone who was supposed to be a teammate. And I did want my teammates, and that was something I'd talked about before with Wendy. Chaos had been all about being alone; I didn't want that. I wanted my team. My friends. And if at all possible, a competent patrol partner. We didn't have to be anything more than that. Just competent teammates, partners, and friends. Fuck the rest as long as I could have that and stay sane, and keep healing.

"I mean it," I said, more quietly. "Please tell me we can work this out."

The Coon turned back around and coolly regarded the view of the surrounding rooftops. I saw and then heard him sigh in what should have been a casual manner, but which he still managed to pull off as if doing me some sort of favor. "We'll see."

I narrowed my eyes at the back of his head, but said nothing. I knew that was the best I would get out of him for now. The Coon, or any version of Eric Cartman, never did anything the easy way.

For a little while, there was no activity from the street. The Coon complained of boredom once or twice, but we held our positions. After about half an hour, our patience was rewarded when I noticed a figure slinking about on the street below us.

"Wait a second…" I said, grabbing out a pair of army-grade binoculars from my utility belt.

"What?" the Coon wondered. "You see somethin'?"

"I… don't know if I should be…" I admitted.

"What?"

"Ssshh!"

"Ech."

I shrugged off his last stupid grunt and adjusted my binoculars. There it was again—a thin figure moving from one side of the street to the next, stack of posters in hand. From the pocket of my skirt, I drew out my camera, just in case. I had had that old pink thing since middle school, but it served me all too well… it had the best zoom out of anything I'd used before, and since I couldn't afford a new one for Harmony purposes, it made do.

"What is it?" the Coon hissed at me again.

"Just stand watch," I instructed, getting low against the large silver duct that belched industrial smoke every now and then. I had to get a close look at the person on the street while the timing was good; before that steam could shoot out from the bowels of the building we were borrowing. "And be prepared for a go on my signal."

"Harmony, _what?"_ he demanded, getting down on the other side of the duct.

"Just be rea—oh, my gosh!" I exclaimed.

With the binoculars, I zeroed in on the figure. Definitely female, and probably a young woman around our own age; I decided give or take about five years, in my head. She was dressed all in black, and sported the gleaming goggles like the other Infra-Reds, but she appeared not to be armed. Instead, she had only her stack of posters. Well, one could bet that the Coon and I would be doing a little propaganda clean-up once she finished her rounds.

"See that figure?" I whispered.

"That chick down there?" the Coon guessed.

"That's her, with the posters."

"Huh. Not exactly the best time of day to put up posters."

"Exactly… unless you had to do it in secret," I nodded. "Somethin' about her is buggin' me, though. So I'm gonna stay up here for a minute and talk to you through the wire. Take my camera."

I held it out to him, and the Coon just stared at it. "What?" he said flatly.

"You heard me, take my camera," I instructed, shoving it toward him.

"I'm not touching that faggy little thing."

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"That's not a camera the Coon would use, asshole!"

"Keep it up and you're never gonna reach twenty-one," I mumbled at him. "Take the gosh darn camera."

_"Fine."_ He made a show of grabbing it out of my hands, taking it up into his taloned fingers and glancing at it for the zoom and exposure buttons before he slipped it into his own belt. The Coon could complain all he wanted, but when things got down to the wire, not even his puffed-up ego could stop him from wanting to be the same thing he'd aimed for since fourth grade: a hero. His methods were questionable. His tactics were sometimes not exactly 'for the good of the team.' But he did want to try, there was at least that much. I just knew that he hated these little missions. Give that guy a giant monster to battle, though, and he'd go all out.

It all just had to do with the fact that Eric Cartman always had to be fighting something. The only person he hadn't ever really opposed was himself.

"What'm I doin' with it?"

"Huh?" I wondered, tracking the figure's movements.

"What'm I doin' with the camera?" the Coon snapped.

"Oh. Get down onto the street and stalk that girl. Try to keep her around here and I'll try to trap her."

The Coon grinned. "Nice. I can keep her busy."

"But," I added, "if she gets away, at least get a picture of her. We might be able to identify her if Red Serge gets a picture and run possible matches."

"So long as this thing can take a decent shot without infusing everything with rainbows."

I rolled my eyes behind my binoculars and sighed. "Just get down there."

I heard him leave, making his way to the opposite side of the roof where there was a fire escape, and which he could climb down without being seen. With the figure occupied down a side-street and the Coon off, I set to work.

No matter what roads I took, no matter how I chose to ever re-invent little details about myself, some things are just nature, and cannot change. I've tried, in my venturing into other walks of life, to at the very least _honor_ where I came from. Hey, everybody starts somewhere. And the places I'd started and tripped and fallen and gotten right back up had all granted me a unique set of skills, which I put to darn good use in the League.

That was what I loved about it, really. Each on our own—yeah, we were hero material. (Well, Kenny did bring up the good point that I was still pretty darn new, and had to tag along in order to not slip up, but still.) But together, we were a _team._ Our small groups were suited to complimentary skills. All together, we were a well-rounded force. I loved that. Mosquito and Craig teamed well together because of their understanding of each other's long and short-range attacks; Toolshed and the Human Kite were synched like twins, and could use one another's weapons for one combined blow; TupperWear and Marpesia were our unstoppable armored defense. As for Mysterion and the Guardian Angel… well, I looked up to them every day. Theirs was a kind of teamwork I'd never know: they were true siblings, after all.

So I understood why I was still partnered with the Coon. I knew how to hold him back or let him go at will without his feeling like he was being scolded or, worse, manipulated.

Because I am a negotiator. And a healer.

I am also, still, after all this time, the best at setting traps.

I was glad that the guys had enough faith in me that I wouldn't falter, to allow that skill of mine to continue. If I did slip at all, well, that's where the Coon came in. He knew best how to stop me.

He's still very much a personal gain kind of guy, which was why I sent him out ahead of me. He could get the credit for the capture, but I'd be the one who set it up.

As soon as he had gone, I got to work. My utility belt was stocked with all manner of helpful first-aid, but I had no rules saying a gauze bandage could just be a gauze bandage. Plus, I carried extras. I liked to think of myself as resourceful, these days.

I wouldn't be a trapper without being able to use found objects, though… and I discovered just what I needed, lying off toward the other side of the building. It was a faded green beer bottle, the label long since scratched and rained away, weathered down to nothing but a weighted glass. Perfect. I took it for myself and peered back over the side of the building from which I'd seen the girl. On the street directly below me was a lamp post, casting a yellow glow on the street and sidewalk. Using my best judgment, I positioned the bottle to be roughly lined up with the lamp post, then dug into one of the pouches I'd strapped to either side of my belt.

In that pouch, I kept, at all times, at least two rollable mesh nets, and I drew one out now. The net could fit into my fist when rolled, but could extend to trap a man of my current recon partner's size: I knew; as Chaos, I'd done it plenty of times. I tied a length of surgeon's thread, also kept in that pouch, to the end of the net, and tucked the thread under the bottle, to hold it in place. I then lowered the net down to a window a couple floors below me. Marking my spot and double-checking my bottle weight—oh, it'd hold up just fine—I made for the fire escape down which the Coon had earlier disappeared.

I could hear the Coon rustling off in the distance. I had time. Very cautiously, I climbed down the fire escape until I was two floors down, and tried the window. Luckily, it opened, and I found myself in a hallway of the industrial apartment building. Padding quietly along the sickly floral carpeting, I avoided apartment doors, but stole a wooden door wedge from outside one of them, until I found a T-shaped break in the hallway, leading down a smaller one that went only to two elevators, one on either side. One window divided them, and outside that window hung my net.

I grinned and slid the window open. I tied another length of string to the net, pulled some of it in through the window, and tossed the rest of the string to the ground. I tucked the bit I'd kept under the doorstop I'd stolen—borrowed, I mean—and closed the window on the wooden wedge. Everything in place, I went back to the fire escape and continued my descent until I was on the sidewalk. I rushed right around to the lamp post, took up the rest of my string and a few small rocks I found on the ground, and shimmied up to the top, where I tied a loose knot. The net hovered above me as I got myself balanced on top of the lamp post. All set.

"Good to go," I said to the Coon through the wire. "Bring her around."

"Nah," he responded, "I got this."

"Two sets of eyes're better'n one," I argued. "Get her over here."

"Ugh. Touchy. Fine."

"Thank you."

"Don't say 'thank you' on duty, fuckin' fa—"

I cut my transmission and heaved an awful, annoyed sigh. Lately it seemed like sighs like that finished up _all_ of my conversations with or about that guy. Oh, well… petty things later. Right now, this was business.

And, oh, business was good: I was barely on that lamp post a minute before the Infra-Red woman came darting down the street, with the Coon in hot pursuit. I had to give him credit: despite his stature, he could keep up quite well, better each year he stayed in the League, really.

The girl was quick, but I was ready. I counted to five, then chucked one of my rocks up toward the roof. I don't have the best arm in the League, that'd probably be Toolshed or Mysterion, but when I had to do something, darn it, I'd try. My first couple rocks missed, but my third hit and smashed the bottle I'd left on the roof, thereby releasing the net.

The Infra-Red noticed and moved to run, but the Coon darted forward, tackled her, then kicked her back into the target area just in time for the net to extend and cover her. The girl did not cry out when she was trapped, nor did she fume, or curse, but she did struggle against the net.

"Heh, I don't think so," the Coon snickered, walking up to step down on the net so she could not get out. He then crouched and held up an object I'd failed to notice: the girl's signature red goggles. "Lookin' for these, bitch?" he taunted her.

She narrowed her eyes at him and spat in his face.

_"Aye!"_

"Even if I don't finish my job tonight," said the girl, "somebody will."

"Why?" the Coon demanded, wiping the spit from his eyes with the back of one hand.

"Because we must."

I sashayed down the lamp post just in time to catch the goggles my partner threw back at me. He then grabbed the girl with his taloned finger armor and snarled threateningly at her when the two were more or less nose to nose. "What's the job, lady?" he demanded. "What're you guys up to, huh? This is my city and I hate your Goddamn propaganda foulin' it up."

"We're only spreading the word," said the girl. "A Carnival is coming to town. It isn't one you'll want to miss."

"I fucking hate Carnivals."

"Oh, no," the girl grinned. "You'll love this one. You'll want to circle up fast."

"Like fuck. Smile pretty." The Coon grabbed my camera out from his belt and snapped the girl's picture, twice.

When he did, though, he stepped back from the net, which allowed her room to get out from the trap. The Coon slid the camera back into his belt fast so she couldn't steal it, but the girl turned on me, her red hair falling over her face for a moment before she flipped it back, revealing her patterned freckles under her eyes and on her forehead.

My breath caught.

Didn't I know her?

No way, no way—the girl she reminded me of didn't have freckles. Still… she looked just like…

No time to think about that. She made a grab for her goggles. I yelped and tossed them back to the Coon, then, in self-defense, punched the girl across the face with my brass-knuckled gloves. She did not make any kind of vocal reaction. Unaffected by her scuffed cheek, she made a swipe at me, and when I backhanded her, she grabbed my arm, possibly intending to flip me. She got one hand back on my shoulder, then twisted herself around me and shoved me back against the wall of the building.

The Coon hung the goggles around his own neck, then brandished his talons and ran at the girl. Our opponent sprang like a gymnast over him, then turned back to strike him again. I was well over my daze by then, and darted behind her, where I crouched and punched her hard in the small of her back with both of my armored fists. She stumbled into the Coon, who slashed off both of her black forearm gauntlets, each of them marked with three rows of three red circles.

Only then did the girl scream. Her retaliation that time was not to attack either of us directly, but she pulled two guns out of her boots and trained one on each of us. "Sorry, boys," she said, giving special attention to me at that point, "I've really got to go. I was going to have you deliver a message to one of your little teammates, but—"

I fiddled with the rocks I still had in my hand. Good… good… Before the girl could go on, I cocked my right arm at the elbow and flicked a rock up at just the right angle to hit her in the face. She reeled back, stunned, which gave me room to steal one of her guns, and for the Coon to take the other.

"Nice," he commented, holding his out to threaten the girl.

"I'd appreciate you knowing I fight like a girl," I commented, tucking the gun I'd taken into the back of my belt. "And that that's just fine with me."

The girl glared at me, then at the Coon, then made a run for it.

"No you don't!" the Coon shouted after her. He raised his gun, but I shoved his arm down. "Chao—Harmony, what gives?"

I sneered at him briefly for nearly calling me Chaos, then glared after the young woman that had been our opponent. "Let her go."

"Why? Mysterion's gonna—"

"Mysterion'll be fine. We shouldn't _kill_ her, and besides, we got her photo," I said. "Lemmie see that camera."

"What's going on?"

"I just… I think I know her."

The Coon handed my pink camera back to me, and, eager as a kid on Christmas (maybe eager as the child of a bomb technician on Christmas, given how quickly yet nervously I was going about the usually simple task), I called up the photo library on the back screen until I could view the photos he had managed to take. He's no photographer, but there were five shots on there, all of them actual photos of the subject, rather than missed exposures. So maybe three of them were blurry, but outlines of people were better than nothing.

One of them stopped my heart up for a second, though. I scrolled past it at first, then went back. Shit… shit…

In a clear exposure, I zoomed in on the girl's face. Her red hair was off swept to the side as she ran to avoid the shot that the Coon had still managed to take. Freckles dotted under her eyes and on her forehead; she looked to be around our age.

Those freckles threw me, but I did know that girl. I knew her pretty damn well. We'd gone to school together for a long time. Back in elementary school, some people would get her and Red confused, since they were the only girls in class with red hair, so she had proudly worn barrettes for many years, which later became variations of headbands, clips and ribbons.

Nowadays, though, she liked wearing flowers. I'd even helped her pick some out on a shopping trip not long ago in downtown Fort Collins. I hadn't known her well here in South Park, but we'd been in a couple classes together at CSU that got us talking and becoming friends.

Her name was Sally Turner. She liked to be nicknamed Powder. She was one of my roommates.

And she'd just pulled a gun on me, somehow had freckles—had she been covering them up with makeup all this time?—and was part of the Movement that was sending threats and leaflets to folks across town.

"This doesn't make any sense," I whispered to the air.

"What's up?" the Coon wondered.

"I _do know her, _Cartm—Coon." Dang it, we were both slipping up all over the place tonight.

"Lame, dude."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to," I apologized. "I just, thinkin' about other stuff, I forgot we were on duty for a sec."

"No, I mean it sucks if you know her." Well that was unexpectedly nice, coming from a guy who'd tried to pull his own punches against me earlier that evening. "But I guess it's also kinda good."

"You think?"

The Coon shrugged, and glared off in the direction in which she'd run. Maybe this new version of the GSM was being vague and difficult, but their reiteration of certain thoughts and themes was enough to give us in the League a fairly good start in terms of what we needed to do to hunt them down. The Cult must have been easy for the guys in terms of tracking: they had always met in the same location. The GSM was still operating from an unknown location, and under a leader who had gone underground before and who was probably not afraid of switching things up to confuse us.

The GSM was pushing that strange, similarly locationless Carnival. They had hacked radio waves. They had a spokesperson who knew exactly what to say to make every member of the Shadow League uncomfortable.

I really thought that I'd gotten to know Sally. That she was better than this. She and Heidi and I had become quite good friends over the past year, and never once had she let on that she knew about me, or any of us, being in the League. She was soft-spoken; that was also throwing me. The girl we'd just hunted down and let go had been very much on her voice, using it proudly and in a way that Sally never did.

Honestly, what hadn't I noticed in my friend? Had she been a part of the Movement the entire time? What on Earth were they after, and how much did they know?

"Hey!" The Coon's voice, a raspy undertone of Cartman's usual, slightly slurred, speech, snapped me out of my thoughts. I gave him my attention, and he held up the goggles. "Check it out."

"What?" I wondered, stepping up to study them.

The Coon wiped the lenses clean on his signature red cape, then held the goggles up for me to see more clearly. "These fuckin' things are computers."

_"What?"_

I grabbed the goggles from him and stared at the insides of the lenses. Oh, I could not wait to get these back to the guys at the base. For us to have recovered these (and, okay, yes, entirely to the Coon's credit, but still) was huge; an event that could see me becoming a solid addition to the team for sure. The Coon was right: inside of the seemingly standard goggles, the red lenses were equipped with flickering screens. On the sides, I noticed, was the same circular decal that the helicopter had displayed, and a switch on the outer right-hand side shifted the lenses' modes.

"Jeez," I breathed out. "We'd better only ever handle these in uniform."

"Why?"

"In case they're bugged."

"Good point."

At that moment, my wire sprang to life and Mosquito's voice came through: "Guys, how's it going? We're with Marpesia, where are you?"

"Apartment building across from the drug store," the Coon replied. "I just found somethin' _awesome."_

"Well, good. Let's rendezvous and head back. Marpesia got word that Movement activity got called off for the rest of the night."

"Maybe cuz-a this thing I found," the Coon boasted. I rolled my eyes, but kept on admiring the goggles. Until he snatched them back from me. _Fine,_ I thought and almost said. _You can do the show-and-tell, that's just fine._ Honestly, he was still such a kid.

"We'll see. Hold your position."

I yanked the Coon back toward the alley behind the apartment building so that we could hide in the darkness, and we stood where we could still view the street, our backs to the walls of the buildings on either side so that we faced each other and had a view from both sides. While I kept my eye out diligently, the Coon continued fiddling with the switch on the side of the goggles, then started swinging them around with one hand as he, in a haughty show of irritation, thunked his head back against the brick wall of the building behind him.

I rolled my eyes but approached the situation. "What now?" I wondered.

"I just fuckin' hate _waiting,"_ the Coon complained. "Mosquito drives me fuckin' nuts. It's all, do this, then meeting, do this, then meeting. _I_ got problems with Scott Tenorman, a'ight? _I_ called that the Goddamn Gingers were gonna strike again. I should fuckin' lead a motherfuckin' mission!"

"Coon, look, Mosquito does a good job," I said in the sub-leader's defense. "And besides, we gotta be methodical, or—"

"Methodical?" the Coon scoffed. "Fuck that. This is pissing me off."

"What doesn't?" I muttered.

"Shut up," he glowered back. I took a good, long look at the emblematic black _C_ on the front of his white uniform, just as he continued, "This used to be my thing. Now it's like we're the Goddamn UN or somethin'. Rules and meetings and shit. I just wanna go kick Scott Tenorman's ass."

I almost snapped at him, but told myself to keep things collected. "But don't you understand why we can't just burst in and do that?" I said. "If Mysterion had burst in and beat up Jim McElroy first thing, you guys' mission against Cthulhu mighta ended up real badly."

The Coon heaved a forced sigh. "I guess."

We did have to stick to strategy. Besides, going after the head of the GSM and bringing him in wouldn't necessarily bring an end to the uprising. In some cases, bringing down the leader could only make the group worse. I had a feeling that the Coon understood that, but I also understood his impatience. However, where there was impatience, there had to be counter-strategy. The Gingers did, at the very least, have a plan. We were just following breadcrumbs now. Soon, we'd find the end of the trail, and that would make the wait worth our while… and hopefully stop a city-wide battle before one could truly break out.

We weren't waiting on our own for long. Craig, dressed in his very simple attire of black jeans, a blue shirt, a black bulletproof vest and dark sunglasses, walked by and discovered us, then waved us out onto the street, where we joined with Mosquito and Marpesia and began our walk back.

"So fill me in," Mosquito requested, as respectfully as his nasal tone could allow. The wash on the street from the lamp posts cast broken shadows along his Mardi Gras-style mask, his signature for several years, which he had updated after the damage done to his old one during the Cthulhu crisis, with Bebe's help, to bear almost baroque swirls of gold foil. Beside his left eye, Bebe had painted, in Roman numerals, the date that the R'lyeh madness had ended. "What'd you find? Didn't you say—"

"Yup. Look what _I_ got," the Coon boasted, holding up his stolen item for the others to see.

"Wait, hold up," said Mosquito, staring in amazement at the goggles. "Are those from—?"

"Yeah," I said. "The Coon got these off of the girl we were chasing."

"You arrest her?"

"Little Miss _I'm-too-nice-to-kick-ass-anymore_ here let her go," the Coon muttered, jabbing one taloned thumb in my direction.

"Oh, excuse _me,"_ I griped back, elbowing him in his thick but armored gut. "You let her out of the net."

"She spit in my fucking face!"

"Shut up!" Mosquito commanded. "Don't cheapen this discovery, guys. Can I see those goggles? Did you test them? What do they do?"

The Coon gave me another glower, then surrendered the goggles to Mosquito as we continued our walk. "There's a switch on the right eye," he told our teammate. "When you flick it, it shows stuff."

"So they're computerized. Red Serge has got to hack these. Nice work, you two."

"How about you guys?" I asked Mosquito and Craig. "You catch your culprits?"

"Yup," said Craig. "You, Marpesia?"

"Toolshed got called in to help Mysterion and Angel kinda fast off," said Marpesia, "but we did end up fighting off a couple guys with Angel while Mysterion was in talking to the Goths."

"Man, I _hope _he got some stuff outta them," Mosquito commented. "I'm looking forward to this recap becau—"

He stopped short, and spread his arms out to get the rest of us to do the same, when a set of headlights appeared on the road ahead of us. "Shit…" he hissed.

"D'you think it's—" Craig began.

"Cops," said the Coon.

"How do you—" Marpesia and I spoke at once, and were similarly cut off when we noticed the Coon's little trick.

He'd held the goggles up to his eyes, over his mask. For a second, Mosquito looked absolutely furious that the Coon would try a trick like that, but gave in almost instantly, especially when the Coon said, "He's not goin' too fast; we can leave if we don't wanna talk to this guy."

Craig gave a nod, and I was the first to agree. I wanted to get away from the action for a little while, and hear whatever it was Mysterion and the Guardian Angel had come across that evening. "I'll distract whoever this is, just in case he did see us," Mosquito offered. None of us argued, not even the Coon. It was simple fact that Mosquito was one of the fastest runners in the League. He'd hold his own in a very literal fight or flight situation much better than any of the rest of us.

"Good call," said Marpesia. "Let's move, boys. We'll regroup and figure out what's next once we get back to the base."

Craig and Marpesia continued on, dutifully, as instructed, but as we walked, the Coon put a hand over my mouth to stifle any yelp I might make, and yanked me down behind a bush on the roadside as the headlights dimmed.

"What're you doing?" I hissed at him. "We've gotta get back."

"I'm not waitin' for the short version of this," he whispered harshly back.

"Mosquito knows what he's doing," I argued, shoving the Coon in retaliation for his roping me into an unorthodox spy mission.

"Ech. _You_ go back, then."

"No way! They'd see me, now. You just—"

"Totally messed this up, I know, I know, whatever," the Coon muttered, rolling his eyes behind his furry mask. "If you're stayin', shut up and listen!"

I had very few other options, so I sat back and did just that.

The car squeaked to a halt, and I peered out through the prickly green branches of the bush to look on as Mosquito stood firm and resolute, waiting for the officer to come to him, rather than lower himself to approaching first. Only one door of the car opened, and Sargeant Yates stepped out. If Mosquito was put on edge by the Sargeant's arrival, he didn't show it.

"You out alone tonight, Mosquito?" Yates asked. "Not your usual game."

"Nor yours, Sargeant," Mosquito noted bluntly. "Where's Murphy?"

"Never you mind, kid." The cop dug into the back pocket of his pants and held up a slip of paper, which got me to tense and got the Coon to let out a hum of disapproval. "You mind letting Mysterion know I'm not too impressed wi—"

"What the hell is that?" Mosquito snapped at the sargeant. His quick reflexes found the hero placing his right hand immediately on the stun gun affixed to a holster at his hip, while he grabbed Yates's wrist with his left hand. My eyes widened, but I had to not react. Yates had received a letter from the GSM, being a redhead himself, and Kenny had brought up the fact that he'd warned the man against it. The stubborn man had not listened. "You got a—you _opened it?"_

"I know what you're thinking," Yates said, attempting to pass the event off. "Mysterion—"

_"Is not going to be happy,"_ Mosquito warned, getting his face as close to the cop's as he could without cutting him with the 'stinger' of his mask, in order to drive his point home. "I thought you trusted us when it came to things like this! I really did."

"Pass him a message, would you?" Yates said, unaffected.

"Don't you _dare_ take any action with that letter, Yates," Mosquito warned. "You'd be putting this entire town at risk if you do."

"Just let me talk with Mysterion."

_Not without backup,_ I was pretty sure all three of us League members were thinking at once. Mosquito grudgingly agreed, and I saw him eyeing the damned letter as Yates folded it back up into his pocket and returned to his car. The engine started up, and the headlights flashed on, blinding us for a moment. When the car had gone its way, so had Mosquito, well on his way back to the base.

"Shit," said the Coon, hauling me up. "Let's go, we gotta run if we're gonna—"

"We can't outrun Mosquito and you know it," I mumbled. "Let's just—"

"Come _on!"_

There was no point arguing with him now. I gathered my breath and broke into an instant jog alongside the Coon. We took back roads and forest trails back toward Token's property. I could not have been happier that we weren't in the dead of winter… the path would have been much more impeding if we had snow to deal with.

"So?" the Coon said to me through huffs of breath as he kept his pace.

"What?"

"Glad we stayed and spied?"

"We shouldn't have."

"Buuuuuuuuut…"

"Just keep running."

Even if the Coon couldn't actually lead a mission, he seemed wholly unconcerned with doing things his own way within the regulations of the missions he was on, regardless. And yes, I had to admit: I was glad that I had seen the conversation rather than heard about it. Besides, who was to say Mosquito wouldn't have gone directly to Mysterion, and Mysterion to Yates, before any of the rest of us knew?

So I was trying to redeem myself and keep balances. But some rules could be bent, I supposed. Either way, I was glad things were looking up for me. Rebuild, the voice on the radio had suggested.

I decided that I wanted that to mean my reputation. Use my old skills in new ways. Lay traps, listen in, be observant. That night proved to me that I was off to a good start. The goggles were a good find; learning about Yates's letter was a setback. But we had identified a GSM member that night, and we were soon, all too soon, about to discover more. Because we weren't the only ones with information to show and tell.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park _is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

That does it for introductory chapters! :3 Now that we've caught up with everyone, it's time to get into the meat of the story, which will truly start in Kenny's chapter next week. ^^

I miss writing Chaos, but he's still got plenty of influence on Butters, it seems. (Much of this chapter was Rosie Denn's influence/contributions, too; I just wanted to make a note, since I'm always so happy to get her Butters stuff~! And who, so she tells me, is more than happy to write it! ^^)

Happy Fourth of July to anyone in the US! Off to go watch fireworks and _Team America._ See you next **Wednesday, July 11****th****!** :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	4. Ep 4: From Hell With Love

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kenny_

Sometimes, a change in routine can be most helpful, especially in the way of keeping one step ahead in the League. The use of Token's van serving as a mobile base, for instance… or the upgrading of our arsenals, which had not birthed a bad idea yet—Stan, Clyde, and Craig constantly experimented with new ideas; Kyle had perfected his handling of new butterfly knives; Butters, or, well, Marjorine I suppose, seemed to have settled on workable ideas.

One thing that never changed, however, even with location, was the way I interacted with the Goths. When I was a kid, there were four of them who gathered to smoke in solidarity with their dark poetry, synth-ridden dark '80s music, and their mutual hatred toward living, in Henrietta Biggle's bedroom. They had long since left that place, the three that remained, for the flat above the coffee shop. Conveniently, the living (or what have you) room was situated around a window that led straight out onto the building's fire escape, allowing me easy access.

Henrietta and her roommates did not lock that window, ever. Oh, they could complain about my preferred entrance all they wanted, they could scoff and scorn every time I appeared to gather information from them, but I knew they secretly did not care… maybe even wanted to help from time to time. Henrietta had been willing from the start, during our middle school days of hunting down the secrets to the _Necronomicon;_ these days, the other two were good for information, as well. And I had to start off with my most trusted resources.

When I arrived in the window that night, with Angel keeping watch from the roof and Marpesia and Toolshed stationed on either side of the building, the three Goths were on their own. It was not uncommon for visitors to be there, now, considering the Goth bands they found to play at their shop at times, or varied members of the crowds that felt that the art on the walls 'spoke to them' in deep, ethereal ways. I suppose I wasn't much different—I just wanted to know what the art was _supposed_ to be telling me, and why.

"Ugh," the tallest one began, with a put-off, phlegmy cough, "here we go. Nancy Drew's back."

"Mysterion," I corrected for the millionth time as I leapt from the windowsill down onto the cracked wooden floor of the main room. The Goths nicknamed me—usually either sleuth names like Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes, or else dumb send-ups of my actual name, or the occasional jab at my outfit—so I nicknamed them right back, knowing that the two men were not fond of using real names anyway.

"Digging for clues, Nancy?" the Goth snorted.

"Shut it, Voltaire," I dealt him back. "Where's Henrietta?" _Voltaire_ was a nickname that both Karen and I had devised when we'd discovered that particular Goth's apparent hidden affinity for the novella _Candide…_ plus the leather antique briefcase he'd acquired in recent years for shop dealings, which had come embossed with an ornate white _V_ above the lock. He could chide me for the nickname all he wanted, but I knew that the guy was a writer himself, in secret.

He jabbed a thumb behind him and took a drag from the clove cigarette that had been hanging out of one corner of his mouth. (Let me tell you, doing League laundry is _never_ fun, but it's especially gruelling after a visit with the damn Goths—fuckin' smell takes hours to get out.)

The flat that the Goths shared would probably have been spacious, had they any less interest in collecting weird shit. To me it was shit, anyway; I tried not to judge. It was essentially an extension of their shop downstairs… or, maybe it was more like the shop was an extension of their home. Coming in from the window, the main room sported two Victorian side chairs and a long sofa upholstered in black and sporting no pillows. Pillows of dark violets, blues and reds were strooned about the floor, though, in a circular formation around a circular black rug stitched with a white spiral stretching from the large outer rim to the exact center.

A TV that had to have been from the mid-1990s was shoved in a corner; atop it draped a black lace runner, and perched on that was a bat figurine quite clearly the mate to the one that had been severed and turned into a tip jar on the coffee counter downstairs. I could not imagine the Goths watching much television. They were music people, as evidenced by the various posters on the walls, several of which I recognized from Henrietta's bedroom from years before. Goth bands through the decades were represented up until the segment of the flat that divided into other rooms.

A small kitchen was situated off to the left of the main room, and behind the sofa was a hallway, papered entirely in old newspaper articles. One section of the wall was labeled _Nazi Conformist Fucks,_ and bore cutouts of the latest political disasters… or, more poignantly, the latest from Hollywood and gossip magazines. I never saw two of the rooms past the hallway; I knew only where the bathroom and Henrietta's room were, and the only reason I'd ever visited Henrietta's bedroom in this dwelling was to make double sure that she was indeed filing, locking, and not sharing any of the dregs of the Cthulhu Cult we were finally (hopefully) done sniffing out.

Lining every part of the walls not otherwise covered were bookshelves. Several were stocked with CDs, tapes, and records, particularly those near the stereo and victrola the three had situated on the wall that divided the main room and kitchen, and some displayed various little sculptures of Gothic icons (bats, more bats, several _Dia de los Muertos_ figurines, and one saved sculpture of Cthulhu that Henrietta hid when there was company, but wanted to keep around in remembrance), but the _books._ Did those fuckers ever have _books._ And I mean several copies of one particular thing. I didn't even know there _were_ that many fucking editions of _Frankenstein_ or _Dracula,_ but those Goths, man, they collected like mad. In that collection, too, were plenty of tomes containing information on dark mythologies and weird folklore.

So I was pretty damn sure I could count on them to have one they could loan me this time around, too.

"Henrietta!" I called into the back of the apartment. The Goth on the sofa muttered something about wondering why I'd bothered asking where she was at all, but I ignored him.

Because the Goths do not yell (either due to their thinking that doing so is vulgar or to the fact that their lifelong smoking habits have diminished their ability to raise their voices at all), I waited a minute for Henrietta to emerge from the back, clad in a black corseted dress that swept the floor and carrying a stack of three old dusty books and one large, and much newer, portfolio. "Remind me again," I commented as my long-time liaison shelved two of the books and set the other items on the floor as she sat on one of the violet pillows near the sofa, "d'you guys run a coffee shop or a library?"

Henrietta sneered up at me, eyes sharp under her smoky makeup, and held one hand out to her fellow Goth, who dug into his black trench coat pocket for his pack of cloves, and into the sofa cushion for a lighter. Henrietta slid the cigarette into her signature quellazaire and licked her black lips in anticipation for the stuff she and her companions went through like candy. "Keep it up," Henrietta warned me as she lit up and took a drag, "and you're not gonna be walking out of here with anything tonight."

"No striking deals after you've offered me something," I said, refusing to sit, though pressure seemed to be on me for doing so. "What've you got? I'm on duty tonight."

"Patience is a virtue," said Henrietta.

"Considering all the sins you've got on your walls downstairs, I'm surprised you'd say that," I noted.

"Oh, effin' a, this guy's back?" The raspy voice of the red-haired shop owner cut out whatever snide remark Henrietta was going to come back at me with. The Goth pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slipped one between his teeth.

"You're the one who keeps the window open," Henrietta pointed out.

"Smoke's gotta go somewhere," the other said in his defense. As he lit up, he kept his eyes on me and asked, "What do you want?"

"Just one question."

Prior to leaving the base, I'd asked Red Serge to print out a good-quality image of the helicopter decal, not feeling like I'd do the right justice to it by drawing it out from memory when inquiring after it. I withdrew the decal from my utility belt and unfolded it in order to hand over to him.

"This decal look familiar to you?" I asked on a growl.

He sneered, blew smoke out his nostrils—and, incidentally, into my face—and stepped back, but snatched the paper from my hand. The Goth tucked his lighter into the inner pocket of his black vest, and studied the decal after flicking his red bangs out of his right eye. "Nope," he said on a puff of smoke.

"No?" I repeated.

"Can you superhero idiots not take that word?" he grunted, passing the paper back to me. "No means no on this planet."

"Thanks for clarifying," I grumbled back.

"Give me that," Henrietta said, begrudging herself to stand. As she did, she gathered up the larger of the two things she had brought in from her room, and traded me that for the print-out. She slipped the quellazaire between her lips and took another drag, then breathed out a spiral of smoke off to the side I was not standing on. "Yeah, no clue what this is, but I guess I'll let you know."

"Now that you've pleased him, princess, can you get him out of here?" the tall one complained.

Henrietta merely flicked him off with the hand that held her quellazaire, and after she folded the paper back up, she tapped the large black volume she had handed me. "That's for you," she said. "Reading material, kinda."

"What is it?"

"You can read."

Fine. I did just that, to discover a white card slipped behind a small plastic covering on the front cover as a nameplate: _Wilcox. Collected works. 1985-c.]_ Well, this was helpful; more so than I was expecting, honestly. "You'd better come on the sixth," Henrietta told me. "Gallery thing. Cash bar."

"Me?" I wondered, "Or…"

"Doesn't really matter, but he's gonna be here."

Good enough.

With the Goths on the lookout for any instances of that decal, and a new collection to scan through, I had a good start to my evening. Unfortunately, with TupperWear not on the field that evening, I didn't have the van to just drop the portfolio into. Thinking fast, I made contact with Toolshed as I was on my way out from the Goths' flat.

"What's up, you get something?" he asked me.

"More or less, but I've gotta run back to the base," I said, realizing that was the best thing for that portfolio for now. "Can you head with Angel to the asylum? Have Marpesia stick around to back up the other guys if they need it."

"On it, Mysterion."

Heading back to the base would put me a little behind on time, but in the end, it was the right call to make. I slipped through my favored dark corners and back roads to the base to leave the portfolio in the meeting room, knowing others would understand why it was there if they should beat me back, then dashed out again, heading toward the asylum.

"Any luck, guys?" I asked my sister as I ran.

"You haven't missed much," she told me. "Toolshed and I ran into a couple Infra-Reds doing some late-night stalking themselves, but we took care of 'em. Hurry over, though, we've just been given clearance to go in."

Good, good—at least we weren't going to be met with opposition there. For the remaining three minutes of my run to the asylum, I did wonder, though, if I shouldn't have paired Marpesia with the Guardian Angel instead. After all, Toolshed had his hang-ups about that place: Randy Marsh had done a good deal of time there four years ago, not to mention both Gerald and Sheila Broflovski. I knew better than to ever send Clyde there unless absolutely necessary, due to Bebe's internment; Craig could talk about it a little more easily, despite his sister's stay as well.

But Toolshed stuck it out, and was right at Angel's side when I made it to the site, where orderlies gasped at my arrival and instantly shuffled toward a hallway on the east side of the building, beckoning the three of us to follow. The asylum was a large building, with floors and wings enough to house and help patients of varying mental ailments. It had become a calmer place in recent years, its staff kinder after the Cthulhu shock and its walls slightly less stark and garish.

We were led, however, to an older wing, that looked like it had not been touched in at least a decade. "Mysterion," said one orderly, a man in his late thirties, I assumed, who had seemed plenty rested and relaxed when we'd gotten there, but exhausted as we approached the hallway for which his partner, a slightly older woman, was unlocking with jarring motions of her hand. "Are you three sure about this room?"

"I'm not sure what my League partners have told you," I answered, "but we've traced a lead here, and we need to see if we're on the right track."

"A lead to what?" the woman asked Toolshed, as she opened the door for us.

"That's classified," he answered swiftly. We began a walk down a short hall, at the end of which was only one door, left slightly ajar. As we drew closer, I made out the plate to the right of the door, bearing Scott's last name and first initial. "Tell me again, though, the man in this cell _didn't_ just escape?"

"No," said the male orderly, "he was transferred."

"Where to?" the Guardian Angel questioned him.

Before either of our guides could answer, the man opened the door completely. Shock set in, but the three of us were able to bite it back in the presence of civilians. To my knowledge, Tenorman had gone, since the age of eighteen or so, from institution to institution, never making it through school and never putting to rest his grudge against Eric Cartman. He had been at the South Park asylum for quite some time, and had apparently put that time to use by decorating his walls.

Chalk, Sharpie, crayon, marker, all manner of media other than sharp pencils and pens adorned the walls, spelling out words and phrases of hatred and revenge. Every single wall. Even bits of the floor.

But what got me the most, and the other two as well, it seemed, given how quickly Angel pulled a camera from her belt, was the back wall, behind the small regulation white bed. On the solid white wall, overlapping Tenorman's many other words, were two sentences spelled out in letters at least a foot tall each, all in capitals and shaded in so that everyone who entered the room would see that bolded proclamation:

_WE SHALL RISE._

That was the first of the two phrases. Angel snapped one photograph, and took a breath. Toolshed didn't even have to catch my attention for our mutual discomfort of the second sentence, though. It wasn't too far a cry for us to figure out what it might relate to:

_WE SHALL BUILD THE NEW BETWEEN._

Tenorman had been here when Nyarlathotep's madness had started sending dozens and dozens of people into this very building four years prior. He could very well have caught it. He could very well have not been able to let it go.

R'lyeh had been a space not of our own dimension. Not of Earth, nor Heaven, nor Hell, nor even Purgatory, but it was accessible, for those that dwelled there, by innumerable Spaces Between. Passages between our world and Theirs. Passages I had been able to find in both life and death, and which I had assumed were gone, now that the land itself had converged back again with the Void it had come from.

Perhaps not.

Leading the Ginger rebellion all the way to possible still-existent pockets of another world? Seemed extreme, but then again, Tenorman was probably desperate. At almost thirty, he had had half his life, now, to prepare for a good, seething revenge against his half-brother.

We had to locate that bastard. And fast.

"Where was he transferred, again?" Angel repeated, sterner this time.

The orderlies donned the same apologetic look, and admitted, "We don't know."

– – –

Marpesia and Craig had made it back before us, but only just recently, and were contemplating the bullet points on the whiteboard when we arrived. Angel handed the camera immediately over to Red Serge in order to get the photos onto his tablet and into our database. I greeted Craig and Marpesia when I walked up to the whiteboard as well, listing _Asylum data_ under the bullet point already reading _Scott Tenorman. _

Mere seconds passed before Mosquito arrived as well, slamming the door behind him. Clearly put off, the first thing he said was, "You guys are not going to believe this."

"What'd Yates want?" Marpesia wondered, turning to face him.

"Yates?" I repeated, giving Mosquito my attention.

"Yeah, that jackass opened his letter," my teammate complained.

"What the hell is his problem?" I exclaimed. What a fucking moron. I don't warn anyone against something for no reason, and he damn well knew that. Sure, maybe our work tended to overcast his and the force's, but for fuck's sake, they got the recognition. They got _paid._ I figured that would've been enough for him. I had tried to tell him before, too: the force was great for the everyday. Leave the unnatural to _us._ "I fucking warned him!"

"Well, this isn't good," Red Serge remarked.

"No shit," I snorted.

"No, really," he said emphatically. "This _isn't good."_

"Mysterion, the photos aren't scanning in!" Angel said.

_WONDERFUL._ A good evening gone weird gone stupid, just what I wanted. "That's just great," I complained.

"Dammit, should we contact the asylum?" Toolshed wondered. Thank God someone could be rational; I hadn't thought of that yet. "I mean, I get that that's asking a lot, but, guys, the stuff we saw—"

"What did you see?" Craig wondered.

"Tenorman's cell," said Toolshed. "It was fucked up, guys, really. He'd written on every wall, and we got photos of all of it, but…"

"Stupid thing, is this the camera's fault? Better not be my iPad," Red Serge muttered, smacking the side of his tablet. "If I can't get this scanning, I—"

Suddenly, the door burst open.

"FELLAS!"

We all turned our heads at the same time to see that Agent Harmony had burst into the room. She then slammed the door behind her, and a defiant, _"AYE! _Asshole," could be heard from the other side.

Harmony ignored the Coon, as he entered with an unimpressed look on his face, and sprinted forward. "Camera," she huffed out her breath, thrusting a hand out to Timmy. "Camera. Take it." In her hand was his slim, pink camera, which I'm pretty sure she'd had forever.

"Timmah?" Timmy wondered, taking the object.

"No time!" Harmony exclaimed. "Just… load it up into the computer, please? It's real important."

"Why're you outta breath?" asked Mosquito. "This have to do with why you guys're late?"

"Yeah, what's going on?" I wondered. I tightened the cap back onto the marker, but kept it clenched in my hand just in case something huge came up. I had the feeling a nice pile of information was about to be shuffled our way.

"Sally," said Harmony. Behind her, the Coon was muttering obscenities, probably for having to make such a boring entrance himself.

"Sally who?" the Guardian Angel asked.

"Turner!"

_"What?"_ Marpesia exclaimed. "Red Serge, is the visual working?"

"Gimme a second, eh?"

Angel muttered something in a whisper, but was smiling as she did, her focus on Red Serge, currently hidden beneath the brim of his wide-brimmed RCMP hat as he scrolled through the images the camera displayed on his tablet.

"This camera's pretty damn old."

"It can read, though, right?" Harmony wanted to know. "Guys, it's crazy!" She splayed her arms out to either side, almost in the way a toddler will try to tell of an enormous piece of news. "The Coon and I staked out until this one girl showed up and…"

"Got it!" Red Serge exclaimed.

"Timmah," Iron Maiden echoed.

Onto the large computer screen overhead was then projected the image of a young woman, her red hair and blank expression recognizable anywhere. I could have sworn Yates had brought her in. That was the very girl we'd unmasked during the previous GSM attack.

"That's her!" Toolshed yelped.

"Yates fuckin' arrested her!" I added.

"Wait, what?" Toolshed wondered.

"Hold on, what're _you_ talking about?" I turned my attention on him, remembering that only my sister and I had seen the girl's face.

"Mysterion's right," Angel backed me up. "Sargeant Yates brought this girl in along with all the other Infras we sent in when—"

Toolshed shook his head, and could not take his eyes off of the image on the computer screen. "Arrested or not, she broke out, and now I _know_ this whole damn thing isn't normal. That's her. That's fucking _her."_

"Her who?" the Coon demanded.

"The survey girl…" Toolshed shook his head again before he explained. "She's the first person who passed a letter to Kyle. She had that freckle pattern. Is that really Sally _Turner?_ I haven't seen her in forever, I didn't think she had freckles."

"She doesn't," Harmony and Marpesia answered together.

"Guys, are you seeing this?" Red Serge asked. "Her freckles're in a really specific pattern…"

Indeed they were. They were lined under each of her eyes in a very precise, almost triangular grouping, and then in a near circle on her forehead. Purposeful marks? Had to be. Drawn? Didn't look it, but without seeing her up close again, I couldn't tell for sure. One thing was clear, though: we had one hell of a new lead.

_"Damn,_ guys, good find," I said. "Harmony, can I have you follow up on this? You know Sally Turner. Try to track her down, and I mean during the day. Talk to her, see what she says. This is good." I grinned, glad to have so many leading points come out of the evening. "This _is good."_ On the whiteboard, I wrote down _Sally Turner-Harmony mission._

"Oh, gosh… thanks, Mysterion," said our latest addition, beaming behind the black mask that covered her eyes. "I won't letcha down."

"And, hello? Aren't we forgetting something?" said the Coon, haughtily. Onto the table, he presented the duo's second find: a pair of Infra-Red goggles. "Took 'em from her when we were fighting. You're welcome."

"Holy shit!" I laughed. "Nice. They bugged?"

The Coon shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not, can't tell."

"Right," said Red Serge, already one step ahead. He scooped the goggles into a metal box that Iron Maiden presented to him from beside the computers. One thing Iron Maiden had added to his own persona-related collection was an assortment of metal holding containers, true to his namesake, that only we could access. Bugs could not be read through them; the goggles would be safe until Red Serge could give them a good look over and possibly de-bug the device. "We'll get to work on these once we've got all the photos sorted and searched."

"Great. Good work tonight, everyone," I congratulated the team as I slid back my hood and untied my mask. "We got a lot done today."

Stan slid off his goggles and gloves, and began wiping off the charcoal around his eyes. "I'm still kinda—" he started warily, then sighed and began again. "I mean, look," he said, addressing all of us after casting a quick glance over at the whiteboard and up at the computer screen, "I agree that tonight was good, but—"

He looked directly at Clyde, similarly unmasked, who nodded, and continued on the same thought: "We still don't have anything on that Carnival."

_"Exactly,"_ Stan affirmed. "That seems huge, so what the hell is it?"

"Obviously the decal from the helicopter and on the goggles is a hint," Wendy pointed out as she un-braided her hair. "Clyde, Craig, was the decal on any of the posters you saw?"

Craig, closest to the corkboard, walked over to the poster the two had earlier brought in, and scanned it a few times. "Huh," he commented after a second. "Yup, I see it, but it's real tiny. In the corner."

"What's the point of that?" Karen wondered.

"Just enough so they know, I guess," Stan said, chewing his lower lip as he stood in contemplation of the Carnival idea.

"Let's see what results we get from the asylum photos," I suggested. "There's obviously a tie between the GSM, Scott Tenorman, and the Carnival… but I'm willing to bet that Wilcox here might give us some answers, too." To aid my point, I patted the portfolio Henrietta had given me. "I think this guy still has a strong connection to weird shit like this."

"Those paintings, man…" Stan muttered.

"I'll give this thing a look through," I assured him. "They freak me the fuck out, but I mean, as of now, we've all seen worse."

That much was inarguable, and we ended the evening agreeing that, despite several lingering worries, we were coming along in terms of piecing things together. The guys returned to their respective personal rooms to change clothes before departing under the agreement that we'd keep one another alerted as soon as we noticed anything new. Butters had his mission, trying to get in touch with that Sally girl—man, she'd been so normal, back in elementary and high school, and so quiet; I wouldn't have expected extremist involvement from her, but, hey, there had been Cultists we'd known from seemingly normal walks of life. Clyde would be keeping a diligent eye on Sargeant Yates (that idiot; honestly—I had _warned him_ not to open that damn letter). And I had a nice big portfolio to leaf through in hopes of piecing together the madness Scott Tenorman had left behind on the asylum walls.

After changing, I made my way to the kitchen and downed a couple of glasses of water before I heard Stan call in, "Hey."

"Hey," I said in response, glancing over at him. "You heading out, dude? Are you the last one?"

"Yeah, but can I talk to you real quick?" He looked nervous. Ready to take on whatever was to come, yes—Stan was just like that… he'd approach cautiously, but once he had a set track, he stuck to it.

"Sure thing, man," I said. "What's up?"

I gave him my full attention, and did not interrupt his brief thinking process. He drew in a long breath, and made damn sure we were holding eye contact. There was one thing Stan and I shared that the others had only barely graced the surface of: death. Death, Purgatory, R'lyeh. He'd been the first one to remember my several Immortal deaths from my childhood and adolescence, and was one of the first to check in with me whenever reminiscences of R'lyeh came up. "So is it true, Kenny? Tenorman's nowhere in the asylum."

I shook my head. "No, and other than that decal and radio station—" which Ike was practically tearing his hair out with frustration trying to locate— "I can't figure out exactly which breadcrumbs'll lead us to him. That's why I'm gonna study up on whatever the fuck it is Wilcox has been painting lately."

"But _that particular_ madness is done, right?" Stan checked. "I mean, dude, Kenny, it was years ago now. That shit can't resurface, right?"

"It'd take a lot," I admitted. "The Gate's gone, Stan, it's all fuckin' gone."

"You're worried, too, though, aren't you?"

No shit. Of course I was worried. Karen was worried, Red was worried. Shit, even Henrietta seemed worried. "Look," I said, as evenly as I could, "we _are_ onto something with the paintings."

"So we're on the same level with that," Stan deduced.

"I'll tell you the second I find anything," I promised.

Stan nodded stiffly and stepped back a little, then winced, ran his hands through his hair, and shook his head. "Sorry. I—jeez, okay, look, no use hiding it from you, but Kenny, I'm kinda…"

"Don't freak out," I tried, quickly.

"I know, I _know,"_ Stan said, almost frantically, "but to be honest, I mean—yeah, most days I can drown it out and pass it off, but I fucking _died once._ What if that was supposed to be it, huh? What if I'm fucking something up by being here?"

"Is that what you're worried about?" I asked. Which was kind of stupid since the answer was so obvious.

"Yes!" Stan tried not to yell. He calmed himself a little by taking in and letting out a deep breath, but still looked on edge.

"Sorry, dude," I said, hoping to placate him. "If it makes you feel better, though, I'm pretty sure you weren't supposed to die then. If you really were, I doubt R'lyeh would have been so forgiving, allowing me to bring you back."

Stan chewed his lip, mulling the thought over. "I guess that's true," he said. "I just… don't want to be too careful. I kinda like this being alive thing."

"Oh, no, believe me, so do I," I managed to grin. "We'll be fine, we'll all be fine. We'll watch our step, yeah, but I honestly don't think you need to worry too much about space-time wanting to get you back, okay?"

Stan nodded.

"Listen," I said, setting my hands on his shoulders. "Go home, get some rest. We're gonna figure this all out. We're the Shadow League, dude, we _will."_

After another heavy breath, Stan nodded, quickly at first, and then more evenly. "Got that right," Stan said. "Keep me posted on how stuff works out, but I hope you get some rest, too, man."

"Will do," I said, grinning as I stood back. I held one fist out, and Stan crushed his knuckles against mine before taking his leave.

He was right to be worried, though. Plenty of things still felt off. The pace at which the GSM was moving, for one, and whether or not something from R'lyeh had managed to elude our diligent cleansing of that sordid bit of history.

Karen hung back with Ike in the meeting room for a while, but eventually the two tired and called it a night. No sooner had Karen left to spend the evening with her boyfriend than I received a text from Red, ensuring a pretty good end to my own night.

_Good day?_

Her texts always make me grin. No matter how I'm feeling and no matter how simple the message can be, I just light right up every time I see a message from her. She leaves me notes, sometimes, too. I've just been, from the start, in awe of the fact that she always takes the time and care to check in on me. It's wonderful. It's home.

_All good,_ I texted back. _You?_

_ Long! Can I come over?_

Oh, hell, yes she could. I couldn't keep my brain focused on work much longer that evening, anyway, and besides, I was always in want of her company. _Sure thing. Wanna wind down?_

_ Yeah. See you soon!_

I was still grinning, right up to the last text. Confusing as any of the missions could be, a night with my girlfriend could get me in a wonderful mood, make me feel ready for anything. I felt a boost in my confidence around her. She'd been so amazingly patient, so wholly reassuring, through every step in our relationship from the very first date. My first truly steady girlfriend, and we'd kept it up for five years. Karen knew that I was thinking of… well, next steps with Red, but my sister kept her mouth shut. (Other than stifling girlish giggles here and there whenever Red came by. Karen would laugh knowingly, I'd send glares, and Red would either not notice or do very well pretending that she had no idea what was going on.)

Someday. When I knew I had a job, when I knew I could truly support Red without fucking up, I'd ask her. We both wanted it, we both had a feeling it was coming; we just weren't in the same position as, say, Clyde and Bebe, who were diving right in after graduation.

For now, I'd take and love these sweet, impromptu visits, these nights of _my place or yours._ Moments to make the best of an otherwise oddly busy summer.

As soon as she arrived, Red tugged me into a minty kiss and suggested we spend a little time outside, while the breeze was still warm.

"So what's up, babe?" I asked Red as I led her out to the field, my right hand on her lower back. "How's your day?"

"Oh," she said, leaning into me, "long, like I said, but just with that kind of 'brain too preoccupied to concentrate on work' feeling all day. You know?"

"Mm. What's on your mind?" I wondered. I kissed her hair, and Red turned to nuzzle my shoulder.

"I mean, lots of stuff," Red confessed. "I'm worried about you…"

"Really?" Red nodded. "Nah, don't be," I said, more confidently than I should have. "I'm fine, Red, I'll be fine. What we've gotta do is stop this stupid uprising before those extremists can bother you again—"

"Kenny, I mean, I'm worried about…"

Red tugged on my arm, just a little, just enough that I caught her suggestion that we sit down. We sat for only a brief second before deciding to lie, instead, on our backs. The moon was only a sliver in the sky, when I cast my eyes above the trees, and I squinted a little to make out constellations as my girlfriend nestled into my side, using my right shoulder as a pillow. I kept my right arm around her, hoping she was warm enough, and her right hand clasped my left on my stomach.

"Is it out there?" Red asked in a whisper, as if someone—something—unwelcome could hear her and react.

"Hmm?"

"What's left. You know."

"The Gate?"

"Mmhmm."

"I guess so," I admitted, staring out through the stars, from almost the very place in which I had been pronounced free of my curse of Immortality by destroying the Shadow. "It doesn't lead anywhere. There's that thing, or place, or whatever… the Void…?"

"What's out there, Kenny?" Red asked nervously.

"Yog-Sothoth, I guess," I said. Henrietta and I had done some speculation on exactly how the Old Ones were continuing on now that R'lyeh was gone from Earth. All I cared about, honestly, was that we on Earth were doing just fine. I didn't like thinking about the Old Ones, or feeling any obligation to do so. I'd earned my life, and I wanted to live it free of constant reminders of the curse I once had. "There are more of those old gods, too… Henrietta's keeping one _Necronomicon_ around, just in case, but our planet's not a portal anymore. We're safe."

"That madness isn't coming back?" The way Red spoke made her question sound more like a demand, as if she had just placed a threat against the Old Ones themselves.

"No. Nyarlathotep's gone. Cthulhu's gone. Whatever's out there is… I dunno," I said. "Different somehow. And hopefully pretty set where they are. Why, what's up?"

Red sighed, and cuddled up closer against me. "Oh, I don't know. This whole thing is just kind of upsetting to me," Red told me. "I mean, you guys have been back to the asylum. Insanity doesn't just come from weird old Spaces Between, sweetie, madness has been with people forever. From what I hear of this Scott Tenorman guy, he's, like… what, _functionally out of his mind?"_

"I dunno," I said with a sigh. "Until we make actual contact with him, it's all speculation. We got photos of his cell tonight, though." I felt Red shiver, and pulled her in closer. "He wrote all over his walls. I mean, yeah, safe bet he's functionally crazy. What I'm waiting to hear is how he re-rallied forces from the inside like that."

"Well, if the group's always been there…" Red groaned. "This stuff is all so scary to think about."

"It's late," I gave her. "Let's not think about it. Okay?"

"Mmhmm." But as we lay there, worry gnawed at Red's mind, and she asked, just to make doubly sure, "You don't think the Shadow could ever come back?"

"No way, babe, don't worry about it. I killed Cthulhu. R'lyeh's gone. Without Cthulhu, there's no Shadow."

"So it's not possible?"

"Snowball's chance in Hell."

Red nestled in, left a warm kiss on my cheek, and said, "All right."

"You okay?" I checked.

"Mmhmm. I love your confidence, Kenny," she told me, shifting to be leaning over me a little. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, providing a curtain all around our faces, tunneling my vision away from the stars and only to her. I worked one hand up to the back of her head, and pulled her down for a smooth, satin kiss.

Conversation was done for the evening. Moment built upon sweet, sweet moment as we lay out in the grass, until Red tugged at me to stand, and we raced inside until I had her pinned to the inside of my bedroom door, my fingers drumming against her waist as she stroked my sides.

There isn't much of a window in that room, but even with that thumbnail moon in the sky, we had enough light to keep our eyes on each other as we pushed from the door to the bed, where she soaked in every bit of the light from the night sky.

Maybe the Void was still out there, but I could not obsess over that forever. Because my life was right here.

– – –

Karen and Ike returned the next morning to continue their work on searching the tablet for a way to show the photographs we'd taken, and to begin analysis of Sally Turner's confiscated goggles. While the two of them set to work in the meeting room, Red and I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal and glass of orange juice each as we flipped through Wilcox's portfolio.

It was a large, black, leather-bound volume, containing prints of varying sizes that chronicled his works from the mid-1980s to his current exhibit at the Goths' coffee house. We did not spend much time looking at his older paintings, though they were worth the look simply to track how frequently and vividly that man felt the need to scrawl out dark, almost apocalyptic visions. Nightmares. Paintings of conflagrations, of rotting buildings and wastelands. Wilcox's head was most certainly not the nicest place to be.

Almost instantly came visions of R'lyeh. There were representations of monstrosities the world was now in the peaceful process of forgetting, but which could never, ever leave the minds of a select few. Across four pages were beings labeled _Dagon, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep,_ and, lastly, _Cthulhu._ Wings, tentacles, burning bright eyes—all but the first were very familiar to me. I had known them all too well. Known Yog-Sothoth, the Gatekeeper; Nyarlathotep, the Messenger from the Void; Cthulhu… yeah, fuck him. _Note to self to never let Butters see this,_ I thought upon noticing the lightning storm present behind the pharaoh-like Nyarlathotep. Lightning: an agent of Chaos.

On the page after Cthulhu was a black, snaking mass that I turned away from as soon as I'd laid eyes on it. Cthulhu's Shadow. The basis for my Immortal curse: that had once been me. My fate. The living, aging, human Immortal that the Cult of Cthulhu had tried to awaken. But I had won. That was over.

I had won. _We_ had won. The Shadow League had undone R'lyeh's madness.

There were blank pages separating the Shadow from the recently-added segment of Wilcox's latest works, which allowed me some space to breathe. Red inched closer and tightly grasped my hand. "Hey, Kenny?" she whispered.

"Hmm?"

"I'm here for you. No matter what."

God, could I love that girl any more than I already did?

I thanked her, my tone barely audible—but I knew she'd heard me, and that she'd always understand. We shared a soft kiss, each ensuring solemn protection to the other, and turned the page together.

There, right away, was that painting that seemed to have upset Kyle more than the others beginning to hang on the coffee house walls. _Wrath,_ with its broken, disorderly mirrors. Opposite that was a print of a charcoal etching depicting two large urns, one tied with a red sash painted in oil. Its title was interesting: _Lust._

"Huh," Red breathed out, perplexed as I was.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Not what you'd usually think, with that word," she added, sipping her orange juice. "At least the angry mirrors kinda make sense."

I looked those over again, then continued on to the next print. I knew that one, as well. _Limbo._ All that could be seen in that painting was mist meeting water, converging to a thin horizon line that made the water twine like a road, like the viewer had to step in and either sink or swim on a journey to wherever the other side was. At the horizon line, the water had a red sheen that bled up into the black and grey sky.

Sins, and a stage of death.

But absolutely nothing suggesting a Carnival, which I would have thought to be right up whatever alley both Wilcox and the Goths seemed to operate on. The only thing that seemed to tie the paintings to the GSM was that recurring, haunting red. It was certainly enough to convince me that there was a stable link.

"Dammit," I muttered, when the rest of the pages bore only tags that read, _FORTHCOMING._ "No Carnival theme. No decal."

"There's plenty here," my girlfriend offered. "Even if those titles are really objective. Did Henrietta say you could keep this for a while?"

"Yeah. Plus, even if Wilcox dreamed these up, there's gotta be _some_thing."

There was more. There had to be. Henrietta had given me this portfolio, and had suggested that we attend the gallery opening that they were hosting for the painter in a couple weeks. Dammit, that was our in. That was our chance. Wilcox _had_ to speak directly about his works when they were the subject of the evening.

Confident that answers were on their way, I brought the portfolio back to my room and dressed while my girlfriend brushed out her hair in the mirror she kept near my work desk. She was filling in a few hours at the clothing store, from late morning to mid-afternoon, and had brought with her the night before a purplish dress with a feathery skirt that brushed her knees. As she labored over which necklace from the assortment I let her keep around in my room, I glanced over at her and asked, "How're you feeling, babe, really?"

"Hmm?"

"Few days ago," I recalled, "you were all for going by Rebecca for a while. You still want…?"

Red studied her reflection, then smoothed out her hair and turned to look at me. "No," she said, softly but defiantly. "I'm Red; you're right. I panicked that day, sweetie, sorry."

"It's all good," I grinned. "No harm done."

"I'm not going to let a little scare take away who I am."

Truer words, sweetheart.

I pulled her in for one last protective embrace before we set out into town. As we walked, we let ourselves go with a bit of a shift in conversation, beginning with me apologizing for having no car and therefore having to _walk_ her into town wearing that expensive-looking dress. Red didn't care. "At least I brought different shoes for work," she laughed, though.

I kissed her at the door to her shop, and she promised to text me once she was out. Texts on the mind, I made contact with Karen as soon as I walked the rest of the block after the clothing store to check on her and Ike's progress. The photographs were infuriating both of them, so they'd moved onto the goggles.

Fearing possible bugs, I decided to give those two time; Ike was far ahead of me when it came to technology, and honestly so was Karen. I'd let them work it out before I got a good look at the device myself.

Since Red's shift wasn't a full one, I decided to hang out in town for a while, in order to walk her back at the end of her short day. To pass the time, I wandered the street on which Clyde and Craig had seen the posters going up. They'd done a good job cleaning up after the GSM: no more posters could be seen, just a few peeled corners, reminders that the propaganda had been there, and might return.

I thought to stop in and holler at Yates at the Park County office, only to realize that it would mean nothing if I wasn't Mysterion. That fucking idiot, for opening that letter. The activists would be after him now, I knew it. One step ahead, Kenny; we've gotta stay one step ahead.

Once we knew just what the fuck was going on, of course.

_Oh hey,_ a text from Karen came through a couple hours after I'd left Red's store, just as I was wondering what the rest of my day would look like. _Can you pick sth up for us?_

_ Sure what,_ I texted back. Thank God Karen had not submitted to the shared Broflovski _text in complete sentences with proper punctuation or else _mindset while dating Ike.

Ike texted back some tech name for a wire I couldn't even make sense of, so I saved the screen, replied with a simple_ ok,_ and made my way to the best electronics store in town, sure that someone there could help me out.

Luckily, my search proved fruitful thanks to some highly knowledgeable high school kid working the camera section who spoke fluent computer nerd like Ike did, but I wasn't in line a minute before an easily recognizable voice coughed out from behind me, "Oh, hey, asshole."

I rolled my eyes. How the fuck did I keep forgetting that Cartman had achieved manager status at this place? Certain that he was going to attempt to make some tired joke about my being too poor to shop there, I turned, only to find him not nametagged and uniformed, but eagerly swinging a plastic bag full of a game-shaped purchase around his right index finger. "Hey, shitbag," I said, just as politely. "Flaunting your shoplifting capabilities?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Kenny?" Cartman dealt right back. "Nope, just takin' this home to test. You know. So I can talk it up and shit."

"New game?" I guessed, slapping at his plastic bag.

Cartman yanked the bag back defensively as I went through the blank motions of paying for my own purchase. "Yes, but it is for my eyes only."

"Bull," I snorted. "What is it?"

The cashier handed back my change and the wire, which I just stuffed, in its box, into my deep jeans pocket rather than caring to tote a bag around, and then I walked out with Cartman as he continued haughtily swinging his purchase around as if to taunt me. Years of knowing the guy had taught me exactly how to react to his tauntings (which was, essentially, to ignore), but curiosity was sure to win over. "Nothin' important," he answered my question.

"Come on, don't be a dick," I said, ramming my elbow into his ribs. "They don't give you advance copies of shit there, do they?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, but at work I _am_ the 'they,' bitch," Cartman sneered. Oh, yeah. Fucking _management,_ and he was twenty. Fuck. I'd get somewhere, I had to keep telling myself. I _would_ get a real position, soon. "Still think I'm B-Team?"

I let out a harsh sigh, mostly so that he'd get that I was sick of his bitching about that. "Dude," I said numbly, "I just pass out assignments as I think of them. You know that."

"Then how come fuckin' Clyde's always A-Team?"

"Because Clyde is _really organized,"_ I said through grated teeth.

"What about Craig? Craig's an asshole."

"Craig is Clyde's best partner. Shut the fuck up. What's in the bag?"

"I'll tell you if you admit I'm A-Team material."

What a dick. But, whatever, I figured. At the end of the day, we were friends. Cartman and I didn't hang out all that much due to going to different schools now, but I'm not the kind of person who alienates friends without a desperate need to do so. I mean, shit, I consider everyone in the League my family. (Maybe Cartman was the estranged brother, or maybe just the irritating second cousin, but whatever, he was there and I respected him as such.) And, yeah, Cartman did get work done. He took his work as the Coon seriously, even though he was usually one of the first to break character, as it were. He had a hard time letting go of things, but he was always there for backup, and was pretty set on not letting the League go anytime soon.

"Look," I said, glancing around to make sure no one was listening in, "you do awesome work, okay? You really do, dude. I'm not blacklisting you or anything. I mean, yeah, I wish you'd talk a little more, but—"

"About what?"

"Tenorman, for one," I nearly snapped.

Cartman chortled indignantly. "As if I knew," he said. "Fuckin' asshole hasn't said shit to me in years. I's hopin' you guys'd get pictures at the asylum—"

"We did, they just came out black," I reiterated. "That's what I just got this cable for. Ike and Karen might've fixed it."

"Cool. Still, I've got no idea what the hell Scott Tenorman's up to. I really don't." Cartman hung his head and swung his bag around a couple more times, more in contemplation than anything.

"I-I believe you," I said. "Next mission, I'll make sure you're where you wanna be, dude, okay?"

"You sure?"

"Yes. Now let's stop talking about this in public and would you just fucking show me what game that is before I punch you?"

Cartman gave me a scrutinizing look over. I did feel kind of bad, I realized; Cartman didn't have all that much. Maybe I've just become more sympathetic, but the guy really did kind of have it kind of shitty, and to make things worse, he alienated people by being an asshole. I had no idea how he was faring at college. He probably lived for these summers, and this was the last one. Last one. Give the guy a chance. "Old time's sake?" I added with a large grin. "Remember when we were kids, and we'd lie our way into free or pre-release shit all the time?"

"Heh, yeah," Cartman said. "Fine, here. Just don't break the plastic."

"Oooh, touchy," I commented, grabbing the bag from him. The game hidden inside was entitled _Zombiepocalypticorps 3.5,_ the threequel-and-a-half (however the fuck that worked) to a recent series of first-person shooters that we'd gotten into as part of a wind-down routine our senior year of high school. "Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "This isn't supposed to come out till like…"

"Mid-month, but they send pre-releases way early now," Cartman boasted.

"Bull_shit_ you just got that so you can talk it up to customers," I laughed. More like he'd use it to lord over everyone else in the store, staff and patrons alike, even if they didn't give a fuck about the game.

"Wanna watch me play?"

"Give me like five minutes with the controller."

"You fuckin' wish!"

"Five minutes," I pleaded. Karen and I didn't have a gaming system at the base, meaning I was usually mooching off of some friend or other (Token if I was exceptionally lucky and he lent me his latest for a while from the house), so the prospect of so much as watching was great, but I figured I might as well push. "Come on."

"I'll _really_ get the mission I want?" he baited me.

"Yeah, dude, honestly."

"I'll think about it."

That'd have to do.

I followed Cartman back to his house, forgetting if Karen had mentioned whether or not her getting that camera cable was of high importance. It wasn't just the video game that interested me in heading over, though. I hadn't had a good chance to really talk to Cartman lately. He'd been tied into the Cult's curse. Jack Tenorman, Scott and Cartman's father, had been a Cultist; I was convinced that there may still have been more that Cartman's mother, Liane, had not let on. She'd gone crazy, along with so many others, during the Cthulhu crisis four years prior, and it had truly crushed Cartman. He hadn't quite been himself for a while after that had happened, though he'd stepped it up once we made our way to R'lyeh.

This time, I just wanted to be a step ahead with him. He was unpredictable, and acted outside of orders in the League in attempts to accelerate his own acts of heroism. Sometimes it worked; more often, it didn't. But again, when it came down to it, he was worth keeping around.

But it really was Liane we had to keep tabs on. I mean, yes: I believed Cartman when he said he hadn't heard from Scott Tenorman. He wasn't one who'd keep something that huge hidden. His mother, though… she was just so hard to read.

"Mom?" Cartman called out into his house as soon as we walked in through the front door. "I'm back, Kenny's here."

"Oh, hello, there," a lilting, slightly loopy and detached voice came from the back. "I'm in the kitchen, boys, you make yourselves at home. Hello, Kenny."

"Hey, Mrs. C," I called back.

But something felt wrong. Not because Mrs. Cartman wasn't doing her usual bustling about in the kitchen, nor even the hush that fell over the house because of that. No, I could tell; I may not have that acute sixth sense, but I knew, as soon as we stepped into the house, that the rest of our day was going to head down a much, much different path.

I glanced around, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that was making me feel uneasy, and took a couple of strides toward the kitchen. Probably the most frequented room in that house, a small table was set up toward the middle, in case Liane had to entertain any sudden guests, and when I peered in, Cartman's mom was sitting with her back to us, saying something I could not hear to someone I could not see.

"Dude," I hissed, grabbing Cartman's arm.

"What?" he hissed back when my action caused him to stop abruptly.

"Does your mom entertain often?" I whispered.

"I dunno, she brings guys home, what?"

Rather than answer, I just let out a forced breath, then strained to see around the kitchen door; the wall of the living room divided my view, and when I caught sight of Mrs. Cartman's visitor, at last, I nearly tripped. Partially due to angle, but mostly because of the terrible, terrible feeling that hit my chest when I saw him.

I knew who he was, but I had not seen him in years. Not since middle school, maybe. His was one of those faces I would see from time to time, almost as if he were haunting me, just making damn sure I knew that he, or rather, what he stood for, was there.

The thin man had skin that seemed a stranger to sunlight; his paleness was offset by his high-collared black shirt, and his shortish, tangled black hair. Wisps of sideburns framed his face and gave his high cheekbones an even more appalling angle than what was natural. His eyes were downcast, toward a steaming china cup of tea.

Then, he saw me. I blinked, and then he was looking up, red eyes staring into and through me.

"Kenny, the fuck?" Cartman spat, which was the only thing that got me thinking on my feet again.

Liane was still saying words, but the man continued staring at me.

"Dude," Cartman commented, sounding put off. He'd noticed the visitor by now, too. He set his purchase down and took strides toward the kitchen; I followed two steps behind, trying to keep a steady pace of breathing. "Hey, Mom," Cartman said once he'd reached the kitchen doorway. "Who's that?"

"Hmm? Oh," said Liane, glancing back at us as she spoke. She looked tired. Nervous but content. "Kind of a funny story, hon."

"Funny? He your new boyfriend or somethin'?"

Oddly enough, Liane laughed. Her visitor continued staring at me; he took a sip of tea, set it down with hardly a sound, and grinned, showing a row of unmarred, white, white teeth. "Goodness, no," Mrs. Cartman answered. "That would just be awkward."

Indeed.

The pits of Hell were in her visitor's eyes, and for good reason. The last time I'd seen that guy had been in Hell itself, back when my frequent deaths had brought me to one of a few different stops of the afterlife. But Cartman had seen him once, too; everyone in the League had, other than Timmy, Karen and Ike. Back in third grade.

No mistaking him. His name was Damien Thorn, and he was the son of the devil.

I'd wondered here and there, usually in Hell, how he'd come to be. His father had, to my knowledge, never shown any interest in taking a woman to bed. I thought that I had glimpsed his mother, back in elementary school, though she well could have been a nanny or caregiver; I was not one to judge.

Not back then, anyway. I sure as shit was now.

"Awkward how?" Cartman demanded.

"Well…" Liane turned to her guest, and asked, "Would you mind? Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced you. This is my son, Eric, and—"

"As honored as I am to have met you, I'm afraid I must be going," said Damien, rising noiselessly from the table. His voice was a high but listenable tenor, gliding more than grating, and he was very precise with words. "I'm sure you can do the story justice."

"Going?" Liane repeated almost sadly. "But—"

"Business. You understand." He passed his red eyes between the three of us, then patted Mrs. Cartman on the shoulder as he walked by, and said, "Thank you for the tea, Mother."

Time froze as he walked by. My ears were ringing as my brain tried to process the impossible words I had just heard. Damien's every light footstep seemed to echo as he left the house, and only when the door clicked softly shut did my capability to speak return to me as I blasted out, _"WHAT?"_

Cartman didn't even shoot me a glare. He could hardly move, himself. No, he just looked blankly at his mother, looking lost and helpless for a second before, too, becoming enraged.

But while he could not speak, I needed, _needed_ answers. "Wait, wait, wait, what the _fuck?"_ I spat out. Liane furrowed her eyebrows at me as she stood, displaying her dislike for profanity (amazing, for a woman who could write the book on being a no-holds-barred whore), but I ignored her. "Did D—did that guy just call you _Mom?"_

Liane glanced down at the table, at the delicate china teacups, and the void left in Damien's departure. She then lifted her eyes back to us. Her brown hair was in need of coloring, but I took the effect to be a shocked white, more than anything. Liane gave me a bit of recognition, but primarily focused her gaze on her son, who still had not moved. Cartman began to take heavier breaths, as his rage built. Any second now, he'd explode.

"I'm sorry, Kenny," Liane finally said to me, "but would you mind if I just had a talk with my son alone for a little while?"

"Uhh… yeah," I said, "sure thing…"

Liane nodded and bussed the teacups away, so I took the few seconds I had to grab Cartman and demand in a whisper, "By the kitchen window. Talk by the kitchen window."

He nodded, tense, understanding but still boiling over too much to speak.

I left the house in as normal a fashion as I could attempt, then bolted around to the back, where I stood against the outer wall by the window over the kitchen sink. What I wouldn't give, I thought, to have my gear with me and drop in as Mysterion _right the fuck now._

This was impossible. Why this, why now? Why only just fucking now were we hearing so much as a murmur of this? During the Cthulhu crisis, it had taken a good deal of time for Cartman to get a word out of his mother about Jack Tenorman… and now _this?_

The first thing I heard from the kitchen was an eruption of, "Seriously, Mom, the _FUCK?"_

"Eric, please, it was a shock to me, too!"

"Shock to you?" Cartman sputtered back at his mother. I couldn't see a thing through the window, so I placed myself on lookout, ready to fight or run if someone came. "How the fuck could someone you went into _fucking labor with _be a shock to you?"

"Eric—"

"Why do you keep secrets from me?" Cartman hollered, sounding truly hurt. I had never, ever heard him confront his mother like this. Oh, he'd fought her. Plenty of times. Fought her because he didn't get what he wanted, or because he thought she was being unfair. But this was unchartered territory. I knew Cartman loved his mom; we all did. But that woman had secrets to fill a large library. "First you lie about my father to protect the Denver fucking Broncos, you lie all the fucking _time, Mom!"_

"Eric, stop—" Liane was pleading and fretting, probably seconds away from crying. Sooner or later, one of them would snap.

Everyone had their sordid family history. For some people, it could be normal things: addictions, splits, arguments, lovers outside of marriage. For Butters, it had been his parents, driving him over the edge and pushing him to choose insanity. For me and Karen, it had been domestic abuse, lies from our parents (greatest of all being their lie about knowing of my Immortal powers and the secret to how I had been constantly reborn), and an otherwise bad, unhealthy home that did not provide the love that my parents only claimed to have for us when stoned or desperate. For Cartman—lies, yes, plenty of lies, but lies that further and further seemed to justify his historically awful behavior, not to mention his own destructive leanings.

"No!" he hollered. "I've got one half-brother a'edy, how many family members do I have?"

"I'm sorry, sweetie, but I'd been told that he was still-born!" Liane screamed.

There was a pause, and the sink turned on as Cartman's mother began erratically washing dishes.

"Sti-_still-born?"_ Cartman stammered.

"Yes." Liane was indeed crying now. Had I not been so fucking riled at that point, I might have seen where she could have been so emotional. "You know, Eric, I got a really nice Mother's Day letter a little while ago." Letter. LETTER. Fucking shit. "He said he'd pay a visit, I couldn't believe it. H-he showed me his identification, though, I know it's him…"

"Tell me what the fuck is going on, Mom," Cartman demanded, as evenly as he could. He was holding up pretty well, but that did not change the fact that he and I were going to have a long Goddamn talk, here, pretty soon. Cartman, who could command Cthulhu, who had a way with words enough to start mobs. Why was I not surprised he had a relation to the son of the very personification of evil?

Liane drew in a shaking breath and sobbed it out.

"Stop washing dishes and look at me! Look at me, Mom, or I'm leaving!"

Damn.

I knew he wouldn't, but the words were enough.

My own hands were shaking. I tried to grab out my cell phone when I felt it go off, but could not grip it.

"I told you, sweetie, I thought he was still-born," Liane started again, her voice still quivering as she turned off the faucet. "It was before you were born, honey, I—"

"I don't care. Who _is he?"_

"Look, I—I've done a lot of things with a lot of people, sweetie, you know that, but you know I love you…"

"Quit stalling."

His mother took a pause again, then let out a long sigh. "It happened in Vegas. I-I was young, and wanted to travel, and wound up there with some friends one night," she began. "I met a wonderful young man at a bar. He picked me right out from the crowd and we hit it off, and—"

"What was his name?"

"I don't—um… Thorn? Thorn, I believe?" I clamped my hands over my mouth to keep from shouting. "Lucifer was his first name, I think—" _yeah I bet it was— _"but I thought that was kind of silly, so I just called him Thorn.

"The evening happened so fast, sweetie, and I didn't know I was pregnant for quite some time. No usual morning sickness or anything. Thorn showed up again for the birth, but the doctors told me the baby didn't make it. He said he'd take care of everything, and I never knew what happened after that. I never saw him again. I tried to forget all about it."

"What, by fucking the Denver Broncos?"

"Well, that was part of it."

"GOD FUCKING DAMMIT MOM NO," Cartman shouted, his voice starting to go raw. I was so tempted to look in on the two of them, but I held my position. It was crazy enough just _hearing_ this shit; I had no idea how the rest of the summer was set to go now. Forget the summer, the rest of the day, the week, the month. "No more of your 'oh, well' shit! Fuck! Just—_FUCK."_

"ERIC!"

"No, nope, I'm done, bye, done. Screw you, Mom I gotta go someplace."

"Where are you—"

"I just haveta drive and think for a while, kay?"

"Eric, wait!"

But the next thing I heard was the front door slam. Forcing myself to move, I sprinted around to the front of the house, where Cartman was opening the front door of the deep red sports car he'd owned since he was sixteen. "Hey!" I called over.

"Not now, Kenny," he snapped, sliding into the driver's seat. I was still kind of surprised that car could hold him, but he kept the front seat pushed rather far back. Whatever worked, I guess.

"Dude, we need to talk!"

"I just did talk. With my mom. Who's fucked up. No talking."

He tried to yank the door shut, but I stopped it before it could close and leaned in to growl at him, "This is fucking serious! We all have to talk!"

"NOT RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

He tugged at the door again, and so as not to get caught, I backpedaled and had no choice but to let him go. He screeched out of the driveway and down the road too fast for me to follow him. "Ugh, _fuck!" _I shouted at nothing, wishing I had something to punch.

I knew what could remedy that, though, and worked my way back into a sprint as I took my back routes through town to the base. Every step I took felt heavier than the last as I tried to tie everything together in my mind.

It was not a task easily done alone.

The second I was back in the base, I hollered out to my sister but made for the meeting room. Remembering the possible problem with the goggles at the last second, I knocked rapidly and called in, "Karen? Karen, it's me, open up, I need to—something really fucked up just happened."

"Door's open and we're clear!" Karen called out.

I shoved the door open, and beelined it to the whiteboard, where I yanked the cap off of one of the markers, and managed to chicken-scratch out, as the latest bullet point, _DAMIEN._

"Kenny…?"

My sister's concerned tone got me to turn and face her. Worried, she patted Ike's arm while she still stood beside him at the tablet, then walked steadily up to me and placed her hands on my shoulders, getting me to lean down and look her in the eyes. "Kenny?" she repeated, softer this time. "What just happened?"

Unable to put it all into words, I just grabbed Karen and hugged her.

Yes, this was a new lead, but not a very inspiring or promising one. Damien Thorn wouldn't show up out of the blue only to peg down Liane Cartman as his mother and have a good laugh at that small family; no, I figured that the kid who'd spoken in such grand words about the Apocalypse and his father's influence would have grown up into more than just a demon who fucked with people _just because._ We had ourselves a new opponent, I was sure of it.

"Who's Damien?" Karen asked. "Kenny, what happened today?"

"I—I'll explain soon," I told her. "Here," I added, giving her the cable I'd nearly forgotten I had bought. "We've just gotta get those photos back. Fuck. That and find Cartman."

"Find him?" Ike wondered. "Where'd he go?"

"I don't fucking know, but all of us have _got to talk,"_ I said.

"A bunch of people're working today," Karen reminded me, "but—"

Just then, I noticed movement at the door, and whipped my head in that direction, only to notice that the newcomers were Stan and Kyle, the first of whom had a hand raised to knock. Stan lowered his hand when he took in the state of panic I was in, and the two exchanged a quick look before stepping inside the room. "Yo," Stan said in greeting. "What's up?"

"Hi," I said. "What're you guys doing here?"

"Thought we'd, uh…" Stan started.

"Get some training time in," Kyle finished. Well, that was good to know that Kyle was working on that quirk of his again, but even that was something I could not bring myself to think about at present.

Stan nodded. "But maybe we could help out in here if something's up," he offered. "Everything all—"

"Damien?" Kyle read off of the whiteboard. His eyes widened, and he took a few more steps in, with Stan following half a step behind. "Wait, wait, like, _Damien-_Damien? Third grade Damien? That little asshole who—"

"Is the son of Satan? Yeah," I spat out, my anger at the situation finally catching up to me.

_"SATAN?"_ Karen cried, her eyes snapping all the way open. Ike started toward her, then cast a look at his brother and made the choice to hang back by the tablet in favor of business for the time being.

"What the hell?" Kyle spat, grabbing at his hair with both hands. "Are we fucking serious? Scott Tenorman wasn't enough, now we've got the son of the fucking devil on our hands?"

I snorted. "The devil and Liane Cartman."

"That a book?" Stan muttered. "Wait, son of—_honestly?"_

"Apparently," I sighed.

"Dude, what the fuck?"

"Look, no time to explain right now, but I was hanging with Cartman earlier, and saw his mom talking to Damien—"

"You're _sure_ it was him?" Kyle checked.

"No mistake," I said firmly. "Plus I overheard Cartman and his mom talking afterward, and now _he's_ all pissed off about it and drove off somewhere. I figured he might come here, but apparently I'm wrong."

"I'll call him," Ike offered.

"Thanks," I managed.

The next hour was a whirlwind. When Ike's call earned us nothing but the knowledge that either Cartman's phone was off or he just was not answering, Stan and I sent out texts to Clyde and Token, who were off work by now, and the two agreed instantly to be the search party, taking one side of the town each. Karen had the right idea, too, to call the coffee house and ask that the Goths keep an eye out for him, and though of course she was given nothing but a snarky, clipped remark, I was sure we'd find out some way or another if any of them saw him go in.

Red's shift ended as the rest of us continued brainstorming what we could possibly do while waiting to hear back from Clyde, Token, or Cartman himself. When I got her text, I called to explain that we were faced with a crisis; she ended up walking to her house and driving back over. When I'd told her she didn't need to, she insisted, "I want to be there to support you, Kenny, okay? No matter how dark things get."

Kyle and Ike, both needing an activity to occupy them while we were all attempting not to panic too horribly, worked on restoring the photos from the asylum. After a few tries, and Kyle spewing out a few new profane nicknames for Ike's tablet, an image shot onto the computer screen overhead, causing all of us to yelp at the sudden flash of a visual, having been faced with a pitch black screen for so long.

_WE SHALL BUILD THE NEW BETWEEN._

That was the photograph that finally appeared. The rest remained blank.

"New between?" Kyle read off. "What does that mean?"

"Couple guesses," I said, "but I'm pretty sure it's got to do with R'lyeh. Or something. I mean, there's no knowing _when_ he wrote that down."

"I dunno if it matters," Stan added. "I mean, if Damien's here, anything's possible."

"Okay," I said, attempting to keep things calm, despite my own state. "I mean, at least things are starting to seem more linked, but I honestly don't think R'lyeh still has any influence. It's _gone."_

_At least, you want it to be,_ my own brain chastised me.

That was kind of true. For a place built on madness, wouldn't it be just the kind of thing to live on in people's heads…?

I had to leave the room while the brothers continued trying to retrieve photos, since Red texted me from the gate. I let her in and made damn sure the gate was locked, and that the front door to the base was as well, and filled her in as I led her back to the meeting room.

"Damien…" my girlfriend read off of the whiteboard. "Oh, jeez, what was his last name, again?"

"Thorn," I recalled.

Kyle let out a shout, and I turned, wondering if maybe he and Ike had discovered more photos. Instead, however, Kyle bolted over to the cork board and ripped off the envelope he had received from the GSM. "I'm so fucking stupid!" he exclaimed. "Thorn. Fucking _THORN,_ that's the initial on this Goddamn letter!"

The Gothic-script _T_ of the red wax seal: Kyle just might have been onto something with that. "But why would Damien care about Gingers?" I asked. "Not to play devil's advocate, but—"

"Given the situation, could you _maybe_ choose a different term?" Kyle asked.

"Good point." I shuddered. "But honestly, I mean… yeah, it's the same initial, but Tenorman _did_ break out of the asylum, and he's the one who was leading the Gingers before, and besides—"

The conversation stopped abruptly when there was a knock at the front door.

I checked my phone, to see if Clyde or Token had texted or called with any news of Cartman, only to find no new messages.

"Did that just happen?" Kyle asked quietly, speaking for all of us.

I held up one index finger to get the rest of the room to stay quiet. Another knock. Holding my breath, I nodded to the others to signal that I'd check it out, and made my way down the hall to the front. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting to find. Cartman, maybe; ready to talk. But that was doubtful. Damien? He'd been glaring at me, he obviously wanted something from me.

He wasn't going to get it, though. Sure, it'd be great to know just what he was doing back here in South Park, but no matter what his reasoning was, I knew we'd be leading a fight against him, and soon.

I hated throwing blind punches. I wanted to know exactly what we were up against, and why.

Ike hung back in the meeting room to continue work on the photographs, but Stan and Kyle staked out in the living room in case something unfortunate or unexplainable should happen once I answered the door. Red, knowing and feeling safe with the two of them, stayed in the living room as well, but Karen insisted upon shadowing me.

Another knock.

"Who are you?" I asked through the door.

"This is the physical residence of Kenneth and Karen McCormick," a nasal voice came from the other side of the door, "is it not?"

Karen grabbed onto my arm. Nobody was truly supposed to know about that. If anyone asked, I mean, yes, we said we lived on Token's parents' land, but his mom was cool enough with us to allow our mail to be sent to their box, and Karen would usually sort and separate it in thanks for that. If I needed a package delivered, I sent it to Red's. Nobody made fucking deliveries, nobody came here to ask us dumb voter poll questions.

"Who are you?" I asked again.

No answer. And no more knocks.

Karen hugged my arm as I asked, "Hello?"

Silence.

My heart jumped, and I held my breath so that I could listen to activity outside. I heard footsteps leading back down the path to the gate, and gave it another minute before I opened the door and took a few steps out to look around. Nobody, nothing. Not even wind.

"Huh," I remarked, turning back to look at Karen, "that was—"

"Kenny!" my sister screamed, pointing behind me.

I whirled around again just in time to see a figure standing in the space behind me, and once I was fully facing him, he pushed two envelopes against my chest. Reflexes forced me to take hold of the envelopes, but I stumbled back. "Fuck!" I yelped. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Just a messenger," said the letter-carrier. He was shorter than me by several inches, and wore a hooded black sweatshirt, bearing the circular GSM decal on both sleeves. He wore dark glasses, but I could see a line of freckles underneath.

"You fucking asshole, what is this?" I demanded. "What are these? How'd you get past the gate?"

"I needed to deliver those to you. Orders from the top, you understand."

"No!" I hollered. "That's exactly it! I don't!"

"See that your sister gets hers, as well," the messenger commanded.

"My what?" Karen asked, nervously walking up beside me. In a movement I could barely even follow, the hooded man removed one of the letters from my hand and dropped it into Karen's instead. Karen yelped and swatted the man back. "One of _these?"_ she exclaimed. "Why? Kenny's not—and I'm not—"

"You carry the gene," said the messenger as he began taking a couple steps backwards up the path.

"Gene?" I hollered. "What _gene?_ Is this about my fucking—"

"Kenny—" Karen started. She placed a hand delicately on my shoulder; I kept the messenger in my sight while giving Karen most of my attention as she said, cautiously, "Mom." My little sister's eyes sharpened and narrowed, and she clung to me as she threw her accusation at the person who had delivered the envelopes. "Is this about our mom?"

"We need all the numbers we can acquire," said the man, drawing his hood further over his head. That one simple action conjured up too many scattered memories of my years tracking the Cthulhu Cult. All I wanted to do in that instant was beat this person to the ground, but that would accomplish nothing, and I needed to hear out whatever it was he had to say. "Your friends who have received letters already have not responded. We are turning to those who carry a latent gene."

Meaning anyone with a parent with red hair. Meaning me and Karen. Meaning Wendy and Craig, whose fathers both had red hair. Meaning my brother, who I hadn't bothered to think of in a very long time.

Meaning Cartman.

"You get the fuck off of this property," I warned the man. "Now."

He merely grinned, and did as I asked. He disappeared down the long, winding walk, and I heard him scale the fence that surrounded the property. "Remind me to get Ike to electrocute that fucking fence," I muttered to Karen.

"I-I can ask him, Kenny," my sister offered. "Kenny, are you okay?"

Only when she asked that did I realize that my hands were shaking. I stared down at the stark white envelope that trembled with my involuntary movements. It felt heavy. Burden-laden, thick, and unwelcoming. There on the flat front surface was my name, elongated, painted out in flowery script.

_ Kenneth McCormick._

It felt like a new burden, having one delivered to me. They were indeed personally addressed, but mass-produced. What was the point of that? Hand-selection, I suppose. Someone did the photocopying, and another person entirely was charged with deciding who should be approached to join the new insurrection of the Movement. And if Damien really was the _T_ in question…

But there was no reason for him to be. Right? That was absurd. And still, where the hell was Scott Tenorman?

"Don't open it," I told my sister, sternly. Karen only stared down at her envelope. "I mean it, Karen, don't open it! No matter what, sis, no matter how many letters these fucks try to bring you, don't open yours, please."

"Well, you're gonna open yours, aren't you?" Karen berated me. "What's the difference? Kenny, I'm seventeen! I can—"

"Just please don't," I pleaded. "Something tells me they're tracking which ones are opened. I don't know how, but I'm going to find out."

Karen was right, though. Yes, I was planning on opening the letter, only to compare versions of the propaganda contained within. To see if my letter was any different from Red's or Kyle's… and then I'd pay a nice visit to Sargeant Yates and confiscate his before he could make any other movements.

"Kenny!" The call of my name was from Stan, who, with Kyle, led a very shocked and concerned Red out of the base.

"What happened?" Red wanted to know. "I just—we just heard you shouting at someone, and—"

"You didn't hear what that guy said?" I wondered.

My girlfriend shook her head, looking highly worried. "We couldn't hear anyone else."

"What?"

"I-I mean, not really," said Kyle, trying to sound comforting. Whether he was doing that to ease up my mind or Red's, I wasn't sure. It was nice of him to try, but none of us could really be comforted by the fact that the situation was getting more out of control. "Did you—dude, did you just get one of those letters?"

Dismissing my concern over the fact that Karen and I had apparently been the only ones who'd been meant to see or hear anything of that strange man, I nodded and held up my envelope. "I'm going to open mine just to see what it says," I told the others. "Karen, I'm really begging you… don't open yours."

"You got one, too?" Red asked her.

"They're giving letters to people whose _parents_ have red hair, now," Karen explained. "It's ridiculous. Kenny, I don't want to have to confront Mom again…"

"We may not have to," I said. "Let's just… see what this says, and go from there."

My sister nodded stiffly. I looked over at Red, who tightly wrung her hands; there was a sad, pleading, beautiful look on her face as she both feared for what my letter might hold, and prayed for the best. I nodded to her with as calm a smile as I could manage, so as to assure her that, no matter what continued to happen, I would make damn sure that things were going to turn out okay. Her safety and Karen's safety were priorities for me. As long as the two of them could be given a safe and complete life, I was happy; to ensure that they got just that, I had to push myself to make the right calls, to do the right thing.

It was bad enough that Red was being targeted. I didn't want Karen getting harassed more than any of us already were, too.

"It… might just be the same old letter," Kyle offered. "Just, you know, with a couple word adjustments."

"That's what I'm hoping," I admitted. "It's a little disturbing, though, guys, that—you honestly didn't hear that guy talking?"

The other three shook their heads.

"So I'm guessing this might be a little different."

Glaring down at the letter again, I turned it over. The wax seal seemed to be staring up at me, with the intensity of Wilcox's paintings. I did not like the feeling of being followed through the use of intricate inanimate objects. It had been one thing to feel put off by the presence of a _Necronomicon…_ another entirely to have that same awful sense of unease slithering out of something as simple as a red wax seal.

It looked like burnt blood and carried no scent, yet there was an air around the envelope I just did not like. Perhaps it was the seal itself, or something about the ink on the front that was getting to me. I wouldn't know until I read the letter.

I was expecting a letter, anyway.

The envelope was slightly weightier than one that might carry a simple slip of paper, but I'd had the feeling that the person who'd sent it had a few extra things to say to me. To Kenny, perhaps—definitely to Mysterion. But when I broke the seal and lifted back the flap of the envelope to peer inside, there was no letter to be found.

In fact, there was seemingly nothing. Nothing anywhere. Black. Tar black. Pitch black. As if the sun had been sucked out of the sky and we had all been plunged into a deep, cavernous hole in which there was no air, no light, no breath and no sound.

No sound but a whisper.

I wanted to scream, but the second I opened my mouth, a rush of dusty air shot like a snake down my throat and clenched my insides. I still could see nothing; I was surrounded by darkness. I couldn't even feel myself holding the envelope. It must have fallen. It was not important. Only the contents were.

Whispers without words drummed dissonance into my ears, and a language the world had forgotten and never should have known screamed terror into my brain and pulsed its way into my heart and ran thick with my blood. Then, the silent raucous mayhem ceased, and I could breathe.

The air was heavier. My eyes stung. I was sweating; my palms felt cold. Dust seemed to have nestled into my lungs, so to counter the odd kind of burning I began to cough. As soon as I doubled over, arms caught me, hands pulled me back. It took my ears another moment to register sound, but the first thing that I heard was Red frantically repeating my name.

"Kenny? _Kenny! KENNY!"_

I opened my eyes, not realizing I had even closed them, and watched darkness swirl away and bring my surroundings back into my vision. I could feel Karen's fists tightened around the back of my shirt, while Stan held me up by my right arm, Kyle by my left. And there was Red, directly in front of me, her hands, palms flat, on my chest, her face fraught with terror.

"Kenny…?" she asked tepidly. Red pushed against me a little, to try to get me to stand up straighter. I discovered that I couldn't, not without thinking about how I was able to breathe, not without feeling something else moving around within me.

"What just happened?" I asked her.

"I'm not sure," she said in a near whisper. "There was just… it was like a sudden eclipse, and this… I don't even know how to describe it…"

"Serpent," Karen said nervously. "An enormous black serpent."

Oh no. No, fuck, no.

"Guys," I began slowly, "was it—"

"I don't want it to be," answered the ever-logical Kyle.

"I mean, I know how it looked to the four of us," Stan said, attempting to stay rational and composed, "but what happened to you after it shot out?"

I shook my head. "I don't—I don't fucking know, it was really fast. Just… dark…"

"Kenny?" my sister tried.

"Just dark," I repeated. Before I could say any more, I coughed. Coughed and coughed and half expected to spew blood, my throat felt so dry. I brought my hands up to cover my mouth and staggered, relying on the other four to catch me.

"We've got him, Karen," I heard Kyle say. "Can you go get some water?"

Karen was off in an instant and back as soon as she'd gone, handing off a bottle of water to Red, who could barely hold it herself. "Kenny?" Red checked on me as she uncapped and held out the water. "Kenny, can you breathe? Are you all right? Can you _breathe?"_

I nodded, only to cough again from irritation in my lungs. I managed to get a few sips of water into me, which helped, at least enough to allow me a full breath, but when I breathed out again, it came out in a puff of black smoke, as if I'd just been inhaling pure coal. Red was startled but did not cry out. I did, however.

"NO!" I shouted, as I watched the smoke dissipate into the air.

Stan and Kyle tried to hold me back, but I found my footing again, and took one step toward the gate. I was going to kill that fucking messenger, and I was going to fucking kill Scott Tenorman if he was indeed involved. Fuck this, fuck this, _fuck this._ "What the fuck?" I hollered at no one in particular. "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, this is _not happening!"_

Terrified, I held my hands out in front of me. My heart beating much, much too fast, my breath at half its normal speed, I pressed my palms further out. Took in a breath. Let it out. And watched my shadow move. I held my right arm out to the side, and every shadow surrounding that of my arm began to converge toward it. I yanked my hand away and spun back around, only to find that all other shadows, regardless of the position of the sun, seemed to be closing in on mine.

Not possible.

Not fucking possible.

"Oh, shit… oh, shit…" I heard Karen say in a frightened murmur. She held up the envelope I had dropped to cover my mouth, and held it out. "Kenny…? A-a note just showed up on this."

"What?" Enraged, I stepped back over to her and took the envelope from her trembling hand.

Words had indeed appeared on the back of the envelope, in the same script as that which could be read on the front. _With regards,_ it read, _—D. _I felt my eyes narrow and my teeth grate together as I flipped the envelope over to read the front, where my name now appeared crossed out. Underneath it, still in that writing, was the note, _Immortality is but for the dead, but shadows serve us all. Take this first gift, and you could yet have both._

"FUCK HIM!" I shouted, ripping the envelope in half.

And just like that, fate screwed me over again. Check that, not fate. Not fate, just somebody who seemed intent to fuck the lives of everyone in the Shadow League, one member at a time. Damien Thorn had sent letters to Kyle. To Red. To Liane Cartman. To Karen.

At present, I didn't even care how he had done it. The devil's son had twisted some fabric of space-time around in order to give me my own dose of Hell.

Because to me, he had sent the Shadow.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Ah, here we go. :3 We've got the intros out of the way; I had so much fun writing and working this one, ahh… And now that Damien's in, the pace should start to settle, too.

Thank you so much for reading! We hope you're enjoying the story thus far; we'd love to hear what you think~ ^^

Next week, Stan will get a chance to narrate, and the week after… not sure, may go into dual-narration for a bit; it all depends. See you next **Wednesday, July 18****th****!** :3

~Jizena and Rosie Denn

– – –


	5. Ep 5: Rules of the Game

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Stan_

There is something to be said for the term _saving grace._ Growing up in South Park, it wasn't a term we tossed around all that much—it was mostly something I heard from the local priest, Father Maxi, and from a worried mother here and there—so it wasn't something any of us readily had an idea of. I was convinced, however, that if there were an embodiment to the term _saving grace,_ it was, almost too literally, Karen McCormick.

Karen was not the Guardian Angel on the team for nothing. She had committed herself to that divine persona long ago, in honor of her brother, for his being so protective of her for so long. I had gotten to know Karen rather well, over the past few years, and knew that she was the very essence of a guardian angel, especially when it came to Kenny. I'd hear her offering to be the one to run errands, for example, in their day-to-day routine, and had gotten calls from Kenny during previous summers home asking to hang out because his sister was commanding him to be bored and go have fun.

So when, to the horror of all of us present, a great black Shadow leapt from Damien's envelope and enveloped Kenny, Karen was the one to step up and take charge, once she had settled her own panic.

Kyle and I held Kenny back from chasing after the phantom messenger the siblings had seen, and were able to turn him around and bring him inside, where he fell back onto the sofa and did nothing but sit with his head hung in pure shock for nearly half an hour. After the first five minutes, Karen sent Kyle back into the meeting room to file the letter that she had received but not opened, and instructed me to comfort Red.

I took Kenny's girlfriend into the kitchen and had her slowly drink water, which was more or less what Karen was doing for Kenny at the moment. When I sat beside her at the kitchen table, Red grabbed tightly onto my arm and stared me straight in the eyes.

"What _was_ that, Stan?" she asked me, full of fear and concern. "Kenny beat his curse! It's gone! That can't be it, right? Please say it's not."

"I wish I could give you a straight answer," I said calmly, patting her shoulder, "but it seems just as impossible to me, too."

"It might be a trick," Kyle announced from the doorway. He walked in and sat on the other side of Red. Setting a hand on her other shoulder, which got her to turn and look at him, Kyle continued, "Karen is talking Kenny through it right now. It seems like _his_ shadow has been tampered with, but I'm not sure yet if it's _the_ Shadow."

"How are we going to know?" Red wondered. "I'm so scared for him, guys! I don't want Kenny to have to deal with that kind of pain again, this is… it's just…"

Disgusting? Terrible? Impossible? Red probably had too many words to describe the situation, but none that could do so accurately. I nodded, though, hoping to give her at least some solidarity in her concern.

In reality, I was petrified. Kenny did not deserve to be fucked with like that. Not the guy who'd worked for seventeen years to rid himself of his Immortality, no. Four years of peace only to get fucked over? I wasn't standing for it, I knew that much.

The next twenty minutes that passed were too quiet. Kyle shuffled in discomfort with it, and Red nearly broke down three times, but caught herself before she could. I listened in, every now and then catching Karen's supportive tone soothing Kenny in the other room. When she finally called us back in, Kenny was at least sitting up straight, though he was still staring, down at his clasped hands now, his eyes perceiving nothing.

Karen had Kenny's envelope in her hands, and she was kneeling on the floor beside him. I guided Red into the armchair, and gave Karen a little nod to let her take the lead in the conversation. To begin, she held up the envelope.

"Kenny isn't Immortal," she announced. Kenny winced, all the same. "That's what I've figured from this note. He's not Immortal anymore; that guy Damien sent this as—"

"A warning," Kenny finished. His voice sounded raw and hollow. It was quite possible that, in our absence from the room, he'd been crying. I wouldn't be surprised if Karen was the only person who ever saw Kenny cry anymore. Little worried him lately, but he was the kind who would not want to be seen crying around his friends or girlfriend.

His sister was his saving grace.

"Or a challenge," Kenny went on. "Or both."

"Are you—?" I started.

"Am I what, all right?" Kenny nearly snapped. Only his eyes shifted to look at me, while his head stayed tilted down. "No. This is _bullshit._ 'Some curses never die,'" he said slowly. "That's what the radio told me. Fuck this. Fuck all of this."

"We're going to figure it out," Karen assured him.

"Anything we can do?" Kyle offered.

Karen beat Kenny to it: "Find Cartman," she requested kindly. "Get everyone looking. We need to figure out how we're going to be doing things from here on out."

Kenny nodded stiffly, then finally cast a forlorn glance over at Red. I felt my chest clinch, not wanting this Shadow to cause a rift in anything, be it League affairs or personal lives. "Hey, Kyle?" Kenny asked when he found his voice again, again shifting his focus.

"Yeah?"

"Level with me. You can sense things, can't you?"

"I—well, I mean, yes and no," Kyle explained calmly. "It's the same as before."

"Can you sense _people?_ Like, to go out there and just fucking lock onto Cartman? Get his fat bastard ass over here faster?"

I could see Kyle shiver, and caught his meaning when he looked to me for help with his answer. On and off since he had received his letter, Kyle and I had been taking at least a few minutes a day to exercise his ability. Kyle was a very detail-focused person, if a bit short on patience—he'd made remarkable progress, since the onset of his current headaches.

It had started out with the first letter. He'd started complaining of brain cramps that day, and as days went on, lights did react, more so than they had in the past four years, to his shifts in mood. At the height of his capability, Kyle had been able to lock onto objects and move them around at will. But even then, he was limited to inanimate things. I gave him a knowing shake of the head to indicate that this was territory he'd never even discussed with me before.

Kyle turned to Kenny and said, with sympathy for the situation, "Sorry, Kenny. I can't read people. I can read objects, and just when they're right there, dude. I'm not fully psychic."

"Okay," Kenny said numbly. He stared down at his shadow. "Can, um… can you guys go? Like, go help look, like Karen said. However you can. I need to—"

"No, sure," I said, saving Kenny from having to search for things to say when clearly he just needed his space. And the two people who constituted his most immediate family.

It was perfectly understandable, why Kenny wanted to be alone. Or, at least, in smaller company. I sent out a mass text explaining that we'd hit a bit of an emergency situation and to contact me immediately should anyone see or hear from Cartman, and that Kenny had received a foreboding letter. Another meeting was inevitable, which was good, but worrisome.

We were going in circles.

That fucking GSM was leading us around and around in circles, and it was only a matter of time until dizziness and fatigue caused us to relent a little. There was only so much we could take on, but without understanding, there was little hope for pressing forward and breaking out of the spiral. We appeared to be making progress, but I couldn't help thinking that every forward step we took came right along with a clue that raised more questions than connections we had made.

It was awful seeing Kenny so miserable so suddenly. Worse, knowing the best that I could do for him, or for Karen for that matter, was to leave. I cared for Kenny McCormick like a brother.

He had insisted, before, that we—that the League—were his family. I took that to heart, and felt pride and honor in that. We had created something pretty incredible in our League.

So why did things feel so tense?

I hated feeling disjointed. Kyle admitted to the same, once he and I had made it to my car to begin our own leg of the search for our missing member. It didn't seem real, that Kenny would have his powers back. I trusted Karen that his Immortality was gone, but Damien had really done a number on Kenny by sending the Shadow.

I had no idea what to expect once we heard from Cartman again, either. We weren't going to get anywhere with both of them in inconsolable shock. The person that Cartman went to with troubles was his mother, but that wasn't seeming like an option for him for the time being. He used to be close with Butters, too, but they hadn't been talking lately, meaning his second line of defense was a no-go, too. And while Kenny could benefit from time both alone and with Red and Karen, Cartman would be doing himself the worst disservice by only having himself to talk to.

I like to think of myself as an observer. Let me rephrase that: an observer who _gets shit done._ I don't sit back once I know something is going on. It bothers me when I can't help. No matter how well I know a person, I like making myself available as someone to talk to. Kenny and Cartman I knew very well, the former more than the latter, sure, but I'd listen to Cartman if I knew he was trying to deal with something serious he couldn't take on alone. I just plain like helping people.

Cartman would probably, Kyle and I speculated on our drive, deny help for a while. After all, his mother had told him something—well, I'll say it: almost like something straight out of the _Necronomicon._ The one indisputable fact was that Liane Cartman had slept and procreated with both a Cthulhu Cultist and the devil himself. Whether she was aware of either of those things was yet unknown, but it made for a more than disturbed family history for one of the very first League members.

Not wanting to get too much into it without fully understanding, Kyle and I kept our eyes out while making nervous conversation. Kyle was the one to bring it up, at the first red light before we made it into town. "Stan?"

"What's up?" I wondered.

"Sucks about Kenny," Kyle noted.

"No kidding. I'm fucking disturbed."

"I'm terrified," he admitted.

"So am I," I breathed out.

We kept quiet for a minute. "Stan?"

"Uh-huh?"

"It's not gonna kill him, is it?"

"Fuck, I hope not." I shivered. "Kenny's had enough death."

"We all have."

I eased up on the gas, when Kyle's tone turned grim. Neither of us had meant to reference my own brief death, or Kyle's brush with it, but the topic was inevitable. Our primary concern with one another was keeping each other safe. Safe and whole.

We'd just seen something all too like Cthulhu's Shadow—serpent shape and all—devour Kenny and seep into him, reviving one part of the curse he'd been born with and sine beaten. There was no such thing as justice if curses could just be revived. Son of the devil or not, I was fucking pissed at Damien Thorn. As was Kyle. As were Kenny, Karen, Red—everyone would be, once they'd all learned about what had happened.

We were dealing with something that had more power than any of us were ready to comprehend. Sure, we had some strong abilities on our side, too, but while the Old Ones had more or less come with a guidebook, in the form of the _Necronomicon,_ Hell didn't have rules.

Right?

"Sorry," Kyle said.

"It's okay."

"You sure?"

"It's okay."

"Okay."

Silence, until the next red light. "Stan?"

I would have laughed at his repetition, had this been any other conversation. "Mmhmm?"

Kyle hesitated in elaborating this time, but eventually settled on asking, "Do you think I could?"

"What?"

"Do, you know, what Kenny asked."

"You mean—"

"Read people."

Already over-thinking, not to mention needing _something_ occupying his mind beyond thoughts of death and shadows, Kyle opened the glove compartment and pulled out a little black fork wrapped in plastic and set it on the dashboard. Any time he could take to practice, I suppose. I glanced over, curious, and proud of how well he was handling his want to re-strengthen his psychic quirk.

Taking in a deep breath, Kyle held his right hand a few inches above the fork. "Come on, you fucker," he muttered at it.

It was true that Kyle could 'read' objects. Back when we did talk about it a lot, mostly senior year of high school, the term he had coined for it was _re-arranging gravity._ What he was able to do broke the laws of physics; defied Newtonian logic. He'd described it to me before, though very little lately. Objects gave off a 'pressure' that, I assumed, living beings didn't… or that his mind was not sensitive enough to, and that his mind could re-direct with enough focus.

Sure enough, the plastic fork lifted a couple of inches off the dashboard. I grinned, while Kyle fixed his conversation. On a breath, he splayed his fingers and the wrapper on it split open. Holding his hand as steadily as he could, Kyle guided the fork back a few inches toward him off of the dashboard, then let it drop, catching it in his free hand.

"Well," he managed to joke, "at least we know I've got cutlery covered. People're the next step up, right?"

I let myself laugh a little, despite the fact that we both knew we were only using humor to hide our nerves. In support of his abilities and ideas, I reached over and lightly squeezed Kyle's wrist. "Do you think I could?" he asked me again, quieter this time. I brushed my thumb over his knuckles a little, then returned my hand to the steering wheel as Kyle put the plastic fork away.

"I mean, what do you think your limits are?" I asked him.

"I dunno, I guess, just… I don't know, but I just get this weird feeling like… whatever's going on, Damien wants us to be _completely_ ready for it," Kyle said. "That last fight we had with the GSM, dude? I think that was a warning. Just, like, to see what we all can do. I mean, I'm psychic. I—_am_ psychic," he repeated, as if to convince himself, "I'm just outta practice. What if I can, and I've just never trained it? I'm game for working through the rest of it, but… yeah, I have that quirk. I do, it's there, you were right, it didn't go away. But Kenny _was_ the Shadow, and I guess 'was' wasn't good enough…"

He was onto something, almost to the point that I forgot we were supposed to be out on a search. I cast a glance around. Nothing but the usual traffic.

"Kyle," I asked, "what do you think is really going on?"

Kyle sighed, and turned his attention out the window. I stole a glance at him while keeping my eyes otherwise on the road. It's interesting, watching Kyle think. It's like you can see the twists and turns he's making in his mind, connecting and disconnecting, trying out one idea and then ruling it out. "Honestly," he admitted, "I kinda feel like we're being tested."

"Ugh, I'm done with finals," I commented.

"I'm totally serious, though," Kyle insisted, smacking my shoulder for my grim attempt at humor. "Think about it." He slowed his words as he connected his own rationale. "I mean, this group resurfaces after, what, eleven, twelve years of silence? The _Shadow_ coming back, Stan? Everything's all… I don't know."

"Too familiar?" I offered.

"Yeah," Kyle said warily. He drummed his fingers nervously against the window, then, uncomfortable with his own speeding thoughts, shifted around in his seat, tucking his feet up on to the dashboard, then immediately dropping them, crossing his legs one way and then another. "We're being called out. Individually. I don't like it."

Something about the logic of that made my heart skip a beat. "You think?"

"Based on the letters… plus, just… if we all heard different things on the radio…" Kyle trailed off, and I gave him time to work through his ideas on his own.

While we were met with a necessary silence, I slowed my speed and kept my eye out for Cartman's annoying-ass car. Honestly. Of course he'd gotten the very car he'd wanted, and of course he'd take it for pleasure rides day in and day out since his fucking sixteenth birthday. His mother babied him and would probably go on doing so until she lay on her death bed. Not that there's anything wrong with a mother truly loving her son, but Mrs. Cartman had an interesting way of going about it.

Her coddling was sometimes a cover-up in disguise. As currently seemed to be the case. If what Kenny and Cartman had heard from her was true, then Damien Thorn was the dead child of a tryst between Liane and the devil himself. It was common knowledge that Satan was gay, though—six specials of the eternally-running _Jesus and Pals_ had proven that if anyone had their doubts—so there either had to have been something experimental, uncanny, or just plain planned going on for him to have sought out Liane Cartman in her younger years.

Damien, from what I remembered of him, was a Biblical little asshole, who threw firey fits whenever we'd teased him at school. We couldn't have given two shits back then if he was the actual devil's son or not. We were eight years old, and the world was a weird place. Back then, we just went with it.

As life had drawn us into the League, however, 'weird' became more relative, and we were faced with fewer supernatural annoyances and more very real dangers. I thought back to the moment when Kenny had opened the letter that had shrouded him once again in something much too close in form and function to the Shadow of Cthulhu for anyone's comfort.

It couldn't have been the real thing. Right? It had to be a trick. As moments went by, I began investing more and more in Kyle's notion that we were being tested. It might take some convincing for Kenny to accept that, but it made sense to me. Damien, or Scott Tenorman, or both in their own way, had concocted a way to single out our vulnerabilities, and was introducing them to us, one by one, at the most inconvenient moments.

Any moment would have been inconvenient for Kenny, though. The Shadow couldn't just reappear like that. No—I'd _seen him beat it._ Most of us were witnesses to that. R'lyeh was gone.

So what the fuck was happening to bring such nightmares back to life?

"Ugh," Kyle moaned, pulling me from my own thoughts. "I've got the worst headache."

"…Yeah?" I guessed.

He didn't respond for a moment, which clued me into the fact that, yes, it was one of those headaches. He'd been getting them, recently. During finals, Kyle had started to complain of headaches, but he's rather prone to migraines, so neither of us tried to think much of it.

After all, things were moving forward for us. Living together was, as we had expected, exciting but challenging. We'd need our space and then go off our heads without company and then need space again. Normal stuff. Predictable stuff. Simple but fantastic, because we understood. Facing everyday challenges and learning from them was delightful.

So, needless to say, when something like a headache came up, we wanted to treat that just as normally as anything else. The best way for both of us to handle the subject of Kyle's psychic ability was, when we weren't ignoring it, to bring it into conversation gradually. To discuss it as something natural—which, I kept insisting, it was—and treat Kyle's 'pressure headaches,' as we'd nicknamed them, the same way we dealt with our usual ones. Which was usually just to not add any more stress onto ourselves, or Kyle would overdo it, and I would close myself off.

"We can take a little break," I offered.

"Can we?"

"Sure thing."

To keep on our mission, though, we chose to coffee up at Tenth Circle. We both disliked the paintings the Goths had allowed Wilcox to hang on the walls in there, but we had to give them another look over, in case something would come to light.

We passed our orders to Henrietta, who looked like she knew something wasn't quite right, but we didn't get a chance to say anything to her, as her co-worker approached the counter, flicked his red bangs out of his face, and (weirdly) _almost_ smiled. "Ugh," he coughed, "I am so flippin' overjoyed to see you."

"Funny," Kyle returned, "I don't remember ordering sarcasm."

The Goth just glared and said, fatly, "I'm serious, asshole. I'd take any one of you super-conformists right now. Your little friend over there's been sobbing into a cup of Jasmine tea for _hours._ I've been waiting for one of you to come in and get him outta here."

He nodded his combed-down bangs in the direction of a corner table near the window at the front of the shop. Sitting just out of view of the street, underneath another new Wilcox arrival, was Butters. He was indeed nursing an enormous mug of tea and nervously stealing glances at his phone. The gloomy shop owner was clearly exaggerating on the sobbing, but Butters did look out of sorts, if not frightened.

"Thanks," I managed, involuntarily flashing a smile that the Goth haughtily ignored. "We'll go talk to him." Kyle paid, waving off my offer to do the same, then angled himself away from the painting of mirrors that hung on the wall on our way over to Butters's table. "You okay?" I checked.

Kyle nodded. "I just really hate that painting," he said. "I don't know why."

"Huh. Well, we don't have to stay long," I said encouragingly. Yeah, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Kyle nodded again. As we made our way over to where Butters sat, I glanced back over my shoulder at the painting. Was it the distorted logic? The lack thereof? Kyle wasn't big on visual arts outside of graphic design, but he'd never shown a profound disliking for something as simple as a scene of mirrors, not in recent years, at least. Was it the off-centered red one? I couldn't quite tell. I mean, yeah, the painting was scary as anything, but it wasn't exactly an eyesore.

I got my mind back on the immediate present; when we approached, Butters' phone buzzed. He gasped and grabbed it up, then let out a dissatisfied groan and set it back on the round black table. "Hey, dude," I greeted, calmly enough.

_"Waaahhh!"_ Butters nearly leapt out of his seat, alarmed even at my evenly-voiced hello, which in turn shocked me and Kyle back a step. "O-oh, hey, fellas," he said sheepishly, once he'd taken a breath to calm himself down.

"Man, Butters, you all right?" I wondered.

"You're higher-strung than Tweek," Kyle noted.

"Sorry."

"No need to be," Kyle shrugged, "it's fine, but like… what's up? What's going on?"

"Oh." Butters sighed, and looked down at his phone. "I, uh… can you guys sit a minute?"

"Sure, yeah," I said, pulling a chair out for Kyle before sitting myself. "We've actually kinda got some stuff to talk to you about, too, so this really can't be long."

Butters blanched. "Oh, jeez."

"Nothing about you," Kyle assured him. "Just some… I dunno, shit going amiss all over the place."

"You're tellin' _me," _Butters said, wide-eyed. "I tried callin' Sally, just to hang out, pick her mind, you know." Kyle and I nodded. It was strange to think about someone we'd kind of known, back in elementary and high school, being a part of the GSM. "Nothin'. So I call Heidi, and _she_ hasn't heard from her, either. Her parents're outta town, an' there's no missing person report, but…"

"Shit," I breathed.

"Yeah. And all Heidi knows is: Sally got a letter."

That much, we'd more or less seen coming. Kyle's and Red's letters both had mentioned that further information would be given upon compliance to join the Movement. Curiosity had won out for Sally Turner, so it seemed, and now the girl was among the recruits working on that mysterious, and mostly unmentioned, Carnival.

The speculation was that the goggles—thanks to the ones Butters and Cartman had retrieved—gave orders and maps. (And 'the speculation' was primarily Ike's, usually a trustworthy one and therefore, as far as the rest of us in the League were concerned, perfectly viable.) Everyone in the GSM had particular assignments, and, based on our most recent outing, were charged with leading us out all over town.

We were struggling with why. Why _join,_ first of all, and why try to separate us only to bring us dead ends? Not that what we found in Tenorman's room was anything remotely close to a dead end, but I wasn't exactly ruling it out as a red herring, either.

(Which would not even be remotely funny, but not below them. Ugh.)

"How long ago?" Kyle wanted to know.

"Did she get it? I dunno, I'd guess around when you and Red got yours," Butters told us. "All's I can say is, I'm sure glad neither of you responded."

"Yeah, no kidding," Kyle sighed. Under the table, he grabbed onto my hand, and I squeezed lightly, for support. "I'm kind of… _really_ put off by the fact that Yates opened his. If he responds, we might be fucked."

"Who's fucking who, now?" I glanced up to notice that Henrietta had dropped in on our conversation, the drinks she had made, slowly as was her usual pace, for me and Kyle in her hands. Henrietta was a woman who rarely let on that she was curious, but when it came to League affairs, an interesting side of her shone through. She liked being helpful, and we more than appreciated that.

"Cops suck," Kyle translated, taking his drink.

"That isn't news," Henrietta scowled.

"Damien is," I told her.

"Who?"

"You don't know him?"

"Should I?"

I looked from Kyle (wildly confused) to Butters (utterly distanced) and back to Henrietta (oblivious as fuck). "Do your—co-workers?" I wondered, finding a word other than 'friends' to describe the other two Goths.

"If they know, I'd know. And I don't."

Interesting, but none of us made the obvious comment. Well, obvious to us, anyway. The Goths had made it quite clear before that they were not Satanists. After the Cthulhu Cult, they weren't really anything, as far as I knew. I kind of envied them that way, a little, and could relate. They really just plain did not care. They believed what they wanted when they wanted, and did not concern themselves with any labels beyond 'conformist' and 'non-conformist.'

The idea that one of them might know of the son of the devil was not one that we felt ready to bring up to any one of the Goths. Though, truth be told, if any of the Goths knew Damien, it would be the one closest to him.

Assuming he'd gone to Hell.

I hadn't really thought about that.

There used to be four in the Goth group. A kid in Ike's grade rounded out the dark quartet, until his deep, bloodthirsty involvement with the Cult of Cthulhu had been the end of him. If the souls that had perished in R'lyeh had gone anywhere, Hell seemed like the one and only option. I wasn't sure how the afterlife truly worked, though. I'd seen Purgatory after I had been shot and killed; I'd seen R'lyeh both dead and alive, and had some experience with the Spaces Between.

But Hell? That was different territory. Henrietta, having worked so closely with Kenny on figuring out his bygone Immortality, would have known more than I. Mental note to ask her later: made. Assuming I could still wrap my head around things later in a logical manner.

"Well, then, keep your ears open to the name," I suggested when the other two were struck completely silent.

"Damien?" Henrietta repeated. "Fucking conformist ether-vampire name. That's like calling yourself 'Lestat.' Over-fucking-done."

"Maybe," I shrugged, "but I think you'd know this guy was the right Damien if you met him."

"Sure." Henrietta stepped back as if to leave, but stalled herself. She did not look concerned, necessarily, just… not as cold as she tended to be. "Something happen?" she wondered, without sounding even slightly eager for an answer.

"You, uh… might want to dust off your R'lyeh notes, if you've still got 'em," Kyle instructed her.

Henrietta's eyes narrowed, and her black-painted lips flattened, then creased. "R'lyeh," she said doubtfully.

"Just in case," Kyle clarified. "We'll… fill you in. Something's not quite right, right now. Speaking of which," he added, sliding his seat back from the table to stand, "we should probably go."

"Window's open if he needs it," Henrietta made sure we heard before she took her previously feinted leave. She still preferred communicating with Mysterion over any of the rest of us, which was nothing I considered arguable. They'd done their research, and besides, the other Goths could stomach Mysterion better, too, still in secret awe of the fact that he had been the Shadow.

As soon as Henrietta had gone back to her post, my phone went off, with a text from Clyde. In a fully-worded message—which may have taken the guy a while, sorry Clyde, but it's true—he'd informed me that the group was gathering, and that Token had found and retrieved Cartman (from, I later learned, the library, which was the last place he had figured anyone would find him, but a place that Wendy, Kyle and Token all frequented and was therefore within our searching grounds). Kicking and screaming, most likely, he'd made his way back to the base, where he and Kenny were going to have 'a talk.'

We couldn't waste any time, though, just in case things got too heated between those two. While it was true that Cartman couldn't quite hide his fear of Kenny's League authority, he still took every opportunity to be his pompous, difficult self and try to pull focus. I wasn't sure about the pulling focus part of things this time around, but Cartman probably had a lot he wanted to get off his chest.

I offered a ride to Butters, who, after another glance at his phone, agreed. As Kyle was setting to work filling Butters in on the events of the afternoon, despite his having been a recipient of the mass text, I forced myself to get a good look at the painting that had been hung up above the table.

On a smoky grey background was painted what looked like the cutaway of a museum display. On a pedestal at the center of the painting, only about one foot by two, was the statue of a woman holding a set of scales. On both sides of the scale were red, numbered dice: the die on the left showed only one dot, while the one on the right showed six; the right side was lower.

At first, I figured it was a painting of Justice, generally painted and sculpted with a blindfold. But this woman was very much aware of what she was holding. Her face was fully exposed, and she appeared to be staring directly at the viewer. The expression on the Greek-inspired statue in the painting was almost more haunting than the red dice.

It was like she could see our current problem, and was enjoying watching us twist in discomfort about it.

The plaque beneath the painting read, _FRAUD._

The opposite of Justice? That was my first thought.

I kind of had to wonder what exactly Wilcox's methods were. Was every one of these a dream? A fit? He had Wrath and Fraud represented together along with a vision of Limbo. The man must have known Death in a much different way than Kenny ever had. Than most people had. To Wilcox, it was both final and perpetual; that was what I walked away from those paintings thinking.

Try as mankind might, nothing can ever truly destroy nightmares.

– – –

Karen greeted us at the front door when the three of us returned to the base, and hurried us outside to the field, requesting that we let her and Kenny continue having a private word with Cartman for a little while.

We had more space now than we once did, due to our constant want to improve upon our attacks and arsenals. There were enormous trees that Kyle was able to scale in order to get good air with his glider for short-range flight, a shed that Token kept stocked with his own arsenal as well as backups for Wendy, Ike and Timmy: the 'armory,' he called it. Craig, Butters, Cartman and Kenny kept guns in there as well, as did Clyde, whose marksmanship had improved exponentially each year.

There were three target ranges, now, and Clyde nodded over to us from one side of the field, where he had a target set up hundreds of yards away, nearly to the edge of the woods. In his hand was a newly modified sniper he and Token had been working on since fall break. Clyde's preferred weapons were his .45-sized stun and tranquilizer guns, true to his Mosquito alter ego, and this sniper was no different: it shot darts, rather than bullets, giving him rooftop advantage as well as direct field proficiency.

As we walked further in, Clyde set down his sniper and jogged up to us, saying as he ran, "Guys… crazy fucking weird shit going down right now."

"You're telling us?" I said, feeling winded despite having been keeping an even pace. "Dude, we watched Kenny open that letter. Why're we all out here again?"

"Because Kenny's flipping his shit at Cartman and doesn't need an audience," Clyde said, more or less repeating what Karen had worked her way around kindly saying upon our arrival. "Gonna bet fatass is flipping his shit right back."

"Ugh," Kyle complained. "This could not get any…"

"Weirder?" Clyde offered, at the same time I suggested, "More fucked up?"

"Both, everything, and even more than that," Kyle decided. "Also, I mean, I get that Kenny kinda likes taking on missions alone, but hello? We need in on this stuff, too. I'm really fucking worried."

"Same," I stated.

"Guys, everyone's worried," said Clyde, keeping as calm as he could. "Which is why we've gotta keep distracted. And in practice. You can use the targets over there," he added, pointing us off to my immediate left. "Trust me. The best thing we can all do right now is give those guys their space, and keep ourselves occupied. The more rational both of them can be when we go in, the better."

"Did you see Cartman?" I wondered. "Like, is he—?"

"Pissed as all get out? Yes," Clyde nodded. "Me and Token had to restrain him for a few minutes. Check it." He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt, revealing a fist-sized bruise that was already starting to change color. "Got me twice. I forgot how fuckin' bad his punches are."

"Jesus Christ," Kyle commented.

"But really, he's mostly just pissed, and doesn't know what to do."

Beside us, Butters, who'd been keeping silent, started kneading his knuckles together. "Is it true?" he wondered. "The Damien thing."

"Based on the shout-fest that's going on in there, yeah," said Clyde. "Anyway, guys, get to work, okay? It's the best we've got right now."

We couldn't really argue. As long as the opportunity was there, and as long as we knew we'd be kept up to date soon enough.

Token offered up a firing range to me and Kyle, where the guys must already have been anticipating us joining in on the session, not knowing how long we'd all be out there while Kenny and Cartman ate each other alive. Two makeshift tables (two sawhorses each, with planks of wood between them) were set up: one for me with my spare drill guns, and one for Kyle with extra blue hurling discs of Token's. I had no idea how many of those Token had made, or how he managed to have _so damn many,_ but I never underestimated his family's assets, so I didn't question it. It was a help to all of us, anyway, that he had multiple weapons, shields, and backup armor.

"You wanna give it a go first?" I offered Kyle.

"Um… I can't guarantee my accuracy right now, so you might wanna move back a little," Kyle warned me.

"It's all good," I said. "I'm glad you're game for working through your quirk like this."

"Might as well," he shrugged.

Kyle sucked in a deep breath, narrowed his eyes, and thrust his right hand out to the side, so that his arm was a perfectly flat, straight line, from shoulder to fingertips. Gritting his teeth, he then sharply splayed his fingers, then gathered them into a fist. As soon as he'd done that, the heavy hurling disc rose from the table and hovered to about half height, about five inches from Kyle's hand and five inches up from the table.

He let out a voiced breath, brought his hand back as if to throw a baseball, then followed through with that same sort of action. Rather than serving up a pitch, though, the hurling disc followed his exact angle. It hit the far edge of the target and latched in. We'd both forgotten that Token's discs had a pretty sharp metal edge.

"Shit!" Kyle yelped. "Anyone behind these targets might wanna seriously move!"

"Uh… or we could switch to tennis balls?" I suggested. "You know, go back to basics. Or rocks?"

Kyle gave me a smug look. _"Rocks,_ Stan. That's so much safer than the equivalent of a flying pizza cutter."

"Yeah, you're right. I'll go grab the buckets."

What had worked from the start still worked now. Tennis balls were an easy weight and size for Kyle to be able to read, and what he needed at the moment was an exercise in consistency. To get the hang of reading similar objects before switching things up on himself in order to go from one to the next with a breath and a thought.

It really was impressive, and I loved being his support. Kyle curled his fingers in and back out a few times over the two small buckets of tennis balls I'd set down in front of him. His weaker point was lifting an object at rest; he'd done it with the plastic fork in the car, I was confident that he could do the same with these. He needed a couple of tries, but when he quickly flipped his left hand from palm down to palm flat up, a tennis ball followed the jerk of his hand and shot up to about five inches above his palm.

Kyle smiled in spite of himself, but lost concentration. "Fuck it," he muttered.

"You just need to trust yourself," I said, patting his back. "Breathe."

He nodded. "Breathe," he repeated.

"You've got this."

"Tennis balls," Kyle muttered. "I moved boulders, once."

"And you can again, Kyle, I know you can. Baby steps."

"Yeah…" (Then again, even 'baby steps' was a relative term to Kyle: according to his mother, he was that stubborn kind of baby who'd speed-crawled everywhere until one day he just started running. I was not at all surprised, and sometimes quizzed my brain to see if I could remember that at all, since it brought a funny image to mind regardless.)

For the next several minutes, I passed on target practice for myself and focused on keeping Kyle centered and focused on re-directing the fuck out of gravity. I instructed him to start with his non-dominant hand, knowing that he'd feel more accomplished once he switched from left to right and had a stronger handle on things. I tossed him a few to begin with, and he was still able to stop objects without a problem.

We'd been practicing at his house or mine here and there, yes, but he got too nervous anywhere but the actual training field. Here, however, his confidence built itself up minute by minute, trial by trial, until he was raising up five tennis balls on either side of him and aiming them at the dead center of the target.

While he was so wrapped in concentration, I slipped a hurling disc into the barrel of tennis balls on his right. His hand jerked in reaction to the different weight, and he glanced down at the object he'd just lifted, briefly, then grit his teeth and, with another voiced breath, hurled the sharp weighted object across the field at the human-shaped target, slicing it from the 'shoulder' down at an angle. Then, as if he had it on a string, Kyle yanked his hand back, pulling the disc through the air with it, only to throw his hand forward again. The disc hit home, sticking right through the center of the bulls-eye.

I tossed another disc in the air in front of him, and Kyle stopped it without looking at it first, then drew his right hand back again and sent the disc flying up in an arch and back down into the 'head' of the target. "Oh, shit, oh, shit, _YES!"_ he exclaimed when I pronounced the target pretty well defeated.

Kyle turned to face me, grinning ear to ear at his accomplishment. "Thanks, Stan!" he said brightly. He set his hands at his temples, though, and not to wipe off sweat. I made a note to find advil for what I assumed would be a lingering headache. "Holy shit, that felt awesome."

"It _was,"_ I said, grabbing him into the hug that he sprang at me with. "Still got it, Kyle, that's fucking amazing."

"Dude, I never, ever thought I'd be able to do that again."

"Believe me yet that it's a part of you that nothing can take away?" I asked with a slight laugh as we pulled back.

"I mean, I've been convinced," Kyle said, "I just, like… I dunno, I didn't realize my brain was a faucet."

"A faucet?"

"On, off, on, off… full power or nothing, you know." Kyle shrugged. He stretched his arms up over his head, only to bring his hands back down onto his thicket of red curls again as he groaned, "Ow, ow, ow… fuck…"

My heart skipped. "What?" I asked frantically. "What's up?"

"Major mental _ow,"_ was his answer. "Man, I wanna keep going, but if I do I might faint."

"Please, don't."

Kyle brushed his hands back through his hair a couple times, then folded his arms and ticked his head to look at me on a quirky angle. He let out a small, no-harm-done laugh, and said, "Don't worry. All I'm saying is I'm pretty horribly outta practice. Thanks for being patient with me."

"Are you kidding me?" I said, grinning broadly. "Out of practice _nothing. _Kyle, you're gonna have this back before you know it."

"Let's hope it's before anything _too_ crazy can happen," he admitted nervously.

"Too crazy like what?" came a voice from behind us.

The two of us turned together to see that Craig was joining us, from having been working on a twin sword technique against both Wendy and Ike on the far right side of the field, both of whom were always game to be clashing actual steel, rather than trainers. Craig was an expert swordsman, but he couldn't very well whip out his real twin blades on the streets of South Park the way he had against an undead army in R'lyeh, so he'd gone through a few different non-lethal blunt objects of similar lengths and weights over the past few years. And, of course, kept up with his true swordsmanship out on the field.

Just in case, he said.

Currently, though, Craig was also carrying with him was a pair of thick black, lace-up boots and a coil of braided rope, with three round weights tied to the end. He was also, I noticed more accurately as he drew closer, wearing a very dark pair of sunglasses… and Craig was a guy who normally didn't mind squinting on a bright day. As usual, too, he still wore that damn blue chullo hat, even in the late spring warmth. Craig was pretty tight, apparently, with his younger sister, though, and as long as she kept buying them, he kept on wearing them.

"Dude, you were in R'lyeh," Kyle pointed out. "You know as well as any of us what we mean by 'crazy.'"

"I mean, like, did something happen," Craig corrected flatly.

"Not yet, as far as we know," I said. "What's up? You testing something out?"

"Yup. You guys, too?"

I glanced at Kyle, who nodded, then gestured back to the targets. "I kinda have to get back in practice on my aim when it comes to this quirk thing."

"Oh." Craig surveyed the targets for a moment, then turned his attention back to us. "You done?"

"Huh?" Kyle wondered.

"You done with the targets?"

"Yeah… you need 'em?"

Craig shrugged. "I was gonna try somethin' out."

I gestured toward the boots he was carrying, and asked, "What's with the shoes, dude?"

"That's what I've gotta test out." Craig brushed past us, and let his coil of braided, weighted rope fall to the ground. He slid out of his sneakers and brushed the aside, then sat down in the grass to pull on his new pair of boots, the soles of his feet facing us. He didn't take his sunglasses off for a second. "You can look at 'em if you want. Might help you get it."

"Huh?" I asked.

"Look." Craig lifted up one foot off the ground; he meant for me and Kyle to take a look at the soles. When we both realized we might as well give the boots a look, I noticed that the bottoms of those boots were not rubber or even steel. They looked like granite. Some kind of finely-sanded grey stone. There were treads marked in, as they would have been on any old lace-up boot, but a more intricate pattern was carved into them as well.

I felt like I'd seen it before. That particular hieroglyphic pattern…

"Craig, man, what's with the symbols?" I had to know. "Your shoes look like a cave wall or something."

"Stone slab."

"What?"

"Not a cave wall," Craig corrected me. "Stone slab."

"Um, okay."

"Question's still why, though," said Kyle, shrugging as the two of us stood back. Craig stood as well, and diverted his eyes from us. "Like, what're we supposed to get?"

"You'll see."

Craig reclaimed his discarded weighted weapon, gathered up the end of the rope in his left hand, leaving plenty of slack, and spun the other end with his right hand; the three round weights clacked together a couple of times, but then whipped through the air with ease as Craig let the weighted end fly toward the center target. The weights wrapped with a slight _snap_ around the 'neck' of the target and caught, allowing Craig to yank down on the rope and bring the whole object to the ground.

"Okay," he remarked. "That works."

"Dude, that thing's awesome!" Kyle complimented him. I nodded in Craig's direction; Kyle caught my meaning and the two of us joined our teammate, I on his right and Kyle on his left. As Craig started gathering the rope back up, Kyle asked, "What is that thing, anyway? I feel like I've seen stuff like that before."

"Saw 'em when I was visiting my sister over spring break," said Craig. "I figured I should kinda go with it."

"Go with it why?" Kyle wondered.

Craig just sighed.

Hoping we weren't being annoying by asking him too many questions, I went with a different one: "Where's your sister again? Sorry, dude, I just feel like we don't catch up with you too much."

"It's cool. Stand back a little."

We did as he asked, and Craig whipped the weighted end of the hurling weapon around again, this time much faster than before. He then shot down onto one knee and threw the weights out again toward the base of the target to his diagonal left. The weights wrapped right around as before, and he was able to pull the target down and loose the weights in the same yank of the rope.

"My sister did that student teach abroad thing," said Craig, as if his training was a natural part of our nice, normal conversation.

"Oh, Ike did that, too!" Kyle noted. "Where'd she go?"

Craig gathered up his rope again, and slowly stood back up as he answered, almost guiltily, "Peru."

Oh.

_I get it,_ I thought but did not say. Peru was a touchy subject for Craig. I could imagine him trying to get his little sister to choose anywhere but there to travel; if I were her, maybe he'd've convinced me, but Craig's little sister was pretty resilient, and the two knew each other well. Possibly too well, if she had insisted upon going to Peru.

And it was huge on Craig's part to have visited. He'd already re-lived a bit of that ancient Incan prophecy we'd discovered he was linked to, back when we were kids and accidentally wound up in Peru… in R'lyeh, as at the base of an Incan pyramid, Craig had been able to—bear with me—shoot lasers from his eyes. None of us knew why; just that it had something to do with guinea pigs and the ancient Incans.

"This thing," said Craig, holding out his coiled weapon, "is a _boleadora,_ but the Incans called it _ayllo."_

"Dude, I thought you were still kinda sore about Peru," I noted.

"Just the situation," Craig answered. "It _was_ dumb. I dunno, though. I got thinking about R'lyeh and figured it might be worth a shot to try out a couple things. So I went back, I visited my sister, and we did this tour thing with a guide and stuff."

"So, hold up," Kyle said, trying not to laugh, "are you gonna go with a theme on us, now?"

"Not totally."

"Dude, you should finally name yourself," Kyle went on. His tone read that he was still more or less joking. "You could do something like Wendy and Bebe, y'know? Did you learn any Incan down there?"

"A little. I can't really pronounce it," said Craig, "so that'd be pointless." He glanced back over at the targets, and dropped the _ayllo_ to the ground. "I kinda was thinking about a name, though."

"No shit?" I wondered, trying not to grin. Kyle and I exchanged a quick glance, both of us on the same thought: _Kenny's gonna love this._ Kenny—well, Mysterion—was mostly fine with Craig just being referred to by his real name, but he, and even Clyde, had been pushing for quite some time for Craig to just go ahead and code name himself. It was a security thing. Bebe didn't want her name spoken out on the field, so she'd chosen a code name, and if we had to refer to Red, we'd just say 'intel,' but that was rare. Craig saw field action as much as the rest of us, though. Sooner or later, if he stuck with the League, he'd need to make that step. "What made you decide?"

"First of all, it's still kinda lame," Craig noted. "Also cuz nothing sounded right. It's still kinda weird. I'm twenty-one and I'm just now getting more into this thing you guys were doing when you were nine."

"So what?" I shrugged. "Craig, we need you on the team."

"Cool."

"So… what're we gonna call you on the field now?" Kyle prompted.

Craig looked down at his feet. He then squared his shoulders, made sure that his feet were flat on the ground and that he stood in a solid position, then cast his gaze on the targets again, and said, "I'm thinking Endgame."

I let out an impressed whistle. "Catchy."

"You think?"

"Sure thing. But why Endgame?" I wondered. "It's really…"

"Final," Kyle finished.

Without another word, Craig corrected his stance again. This time, he stamped his right foot down hard onto the ground, and then his left. He sucked in a deep breath and lifted his sunglasses. Kyle and I both immediately leapt back, mostly out of shock and partly to avoid any aftermath of the blast that suddenly happened. Just as in R'lyeh, just as in Peru, the moment the sunglasses were off, Craig's exposed eyes sent out a bright blue beam, which then completely incinerated the third and final target.

Once the blast had occurred, Craig slid the sunglasses back on. "That's why," he answered. "I figure that's pretty final, too."

As I waited for my breath to catch up to me again after having the shock of seeing that again, I managed to recall Craig's explanation of the lasers from R'lyeh: his eyes were fine when closed or shrouded, but over-stimulated in open air or natural light. That's how it had been when we'd all gotten a bit of a taste of extra power down in that other dimension, but in Peru, there had been—

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "Dude, is that why you carved that thing on your shoes?"

"Yup," said Craig. "I found that same site with my sister and took a photo. I copied the thing onto my shoes and it worked. It's just that one symbol I've gotta stand on, I guess. I still don't get it. But whatever. When Ike pulled the decal image, I remembered I was working on these. So, oops for not doin' it earlier or something, I guess."

I understood his need for the stone soles, now, too: he couldn't very well just draw or paint the symbols on any old pair or he'd risk the pattern getting scuffed. Rubber soles would eventually wear out. All of us had invested a lot in our equipment, or gear, our identities; those portable tablets of Craig's seemed like a signal that he was in the League for good.

Having those four years essentially 'off' made it easy for many of us to say that we could move on. That we could keep the League going on the side while going on with our lives. The thing that we simply could not forget, though, was that the League _was_ our lives. Always would be.

Kyle, I realized, must have come to that conclusion earlier in the day. Prior to heading into R'lyeh, he'd considered his quirk an annoyance, and wanted more than anything to rid himself of it. Once we were in the thick of things, however, he couldn't let it go, and was distraught when he thought that it had left him for good.

"WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?" Clyde came racing across the training field and nearly drove Craig down with a congratulatory punch on the shoulder. "What the shit was that, man? You been holding out on us?"

"Did Craig just shoot that laser?" Wendy cried out from the other side of the field, where she was still acting as a sparring partner for Ike in a swordfight.

"Yup," Craig called over, as he sat down to remove his boots.

"Where was that yesterday?" Clyde egged him on, wide-eyed.

"Hadn't finished the shoes. Don't crowd me, man."

"I'll crowd all I fuckin' want, bro, that was _sick!"_

"And you're twelve."

"Shut the fuck up, and use that shit on the field," Clyde laughed, helping Craig up once the boots were off.

Craig pointed over to the targets. "I just did."

"Whatever," Clyde shrugged it off. "But… fucking _damn,_ guys. Between Kyle getting a handle on, uh—"

"Telekinesis," Kyle shrugged. "We can just call it that."

"I like 'gravity rearrangement,'" I encouraged him, nudging his arm.

"Anything that works," Kyle said with a not-quite-modest grin.

"Yeah, so between that and—Craig, dude, just—_fuck!"_ he laughed.

"That was pretty amazin'," Butters commented, starting to go about cleanup.

"Yo, Butters, cool it with always picking up after us," Clyde called over to him. "You're one of us, not the maid."

Butters gave a slight smile. It was hard for there to be a real compliment passed between him and Clyde, still. Which I understood, primarily because Butters had the hardest time letting things go. "It's all right," he said, so as not to sound desperate. "I like to clean up." It translated to, _I still owe you guys,_ all over the place, but nobody made mention of that.

The back door opened, and Karen stepped out to collect us for the full discussion. It was a tough call, once we'd gathered around the table, careful not to disturb either Kenny or Cartman, who sat on opposite ends of the long table—thus putting Cartman out of his usual seat and comfort zone—which of them seemed to be having a harder time processing current events.

Cartman sat slouched back, his arms folded, casting a powerful glare across the table. His eyes did not move, nor did they seem to blink. Kenny was standing, hunched over his chair, drumming his fingers along the back. The dry erase marker was tucked behind his right ear, and behind him, in enormous letters along the whiteboard were the hastily-scrawled words, _THE SHADOW._

Kyle and I slid silently into our usual seats. Trying not to look at either Cartman or Kenny, I looked instead at Ike, who was attempting not to show his own worry as he powered up his tablet for note-taking.

"How's it going, man?" Clyde asked Kenny once he'd taken his own seat.

Kenny lifted his head, gave Clyde his attention, then addressed all of us. "I needed that. Thanks, guys," he said to begin. "Last time anyone has to be outta the initial loop, I promise."

"We understand," I said, speaking for the group. "How_ is_ it going, though?"

Looking drawn, Kenny turned to write _Damien_ as the first order of business underneath his own returned affliction. "I'm just gonna get right to it. This much we know," he said. "Damien Thorn is back in South Park. Scott Tenorman," he added, putting the Ginger leader's name on the whiteboard beside Damien's, "has been 'transferred,' and letters are being sent out. I'm willing to bet that Red and Kyle got the generic letter as kind of a warning shot. Things might get personal if you guys get more. Craig, Wendy, your dads both have red hair, so I'd watch out for letters if I were you, too."

"Timmah," Timmy grumbled.

"Dude, you still haven't gotten one?" Clyde asked him. Timmy shook his head and leaned to one side of his wheelchair. "All the better for you to pull one over on them, though, right?" Clyde tried, encouragingly. Timmy smiled a bit, and waved one hand side to side to indicate, _yeah maybe._ "Speakin' of _Craig,_ though—" Clyde went on.

"Oh, God," Craig mumbled.

"What about Craig?" Kenny wondered.

"Fucker's got a laser trick like you would not be_lieve,"_ Clyde laughed. "We've got ourselves a new attack regimen in this guy."

Kenny gave Craig an odd look. Craig sighed. "Peru," he said for the hundredth time. Kenny understood immediately, and scribbled Craig's name down on a different end of the board, probably to remind himself that this was a topic to bring up at a later time. With so much coming at us all at once, I could understand Kenny's want to narrow the subject. Craig seemed more than pleased to not be the center of attention, as well.

"I hadn't even thought of that, though," Wendy confessed, to keep things moving the way Kenny wanted. "My dad does have red hair, but I didn't think…"

"We figured," Karen said, "that Kenny and I had gotten letters because of our mom. There's still the possibility that mine is generic, but I'm not about to find out."

Kenny added _GSM_ to the board, which gave me the feeling, once again, of going in circles. The whiteboard had been erased from its earlier bullet points, but nothing seemed to have changed. Just morale, pretty much.

"And yeah, they're _really_ personal," Kenny scowled. "Ask Stan and Kyle. Right, guys? You saw it, when I opened that letter."

We nodded simultaneously. Had we ever.

"Um, excuse me," said Cartman, lifting a hand, "but that asshole sent my mom a letter for _Mother's Day._ This fucking _sucks."_

"Putting it bluntly," Karen said.

Kenny underlined Damien's name. "This guy's gonna be a problem. He sends me a personal letter? Gonna _fucking bet_ that I've got some personal shit to say to him, too. Motherfucker. Clyde?"

"What's up?"

"Can I get you really seriously on Yates's ass?" Kenny instructed him. "We can't have the head of Park County replying to that fucking letter, dumb as that guy is. Otherwise, Damien's gonna have the run of the county really fucking soon."

Clyde nodded his agreement to the task.

We continued tossing ideas around from there. Spinning circles. I was starting to think I might start having nightmares about nothing but being dizzy from information that I feared would get me nowhere.

To be honest, I am kind of prone to nightmares, nearly in the same way that Kyle is prone to migraines. I tell myself that it's nothing, even though they come most poignantly on or around times that remind me of experiences I'd had either in R'lyeh or otherwise against supernatural forces before. I always have nightmares on Halloween. In the doldrums of January. Here and there, this and that.

Kyle knows. He picked up on it rather fast, and honors my want not to talk about it, just as I honor his touch-and-go attitude about his quirk. He's an expert at changing the subject, always bringing up more pleasant memories or suggesting we find something interesting and different to do in order to create new ones. When he's not around, and I start getting worried about things, I pick up my guitar, just to drown out other thoughts in my head.

Not that I ever hear the music anymore, the flute melody that Chaos once played through South Park to conjure up Nyarlathotep's madness, but I used to hear a line or two of it in my dreams, which was how I'd known they were nightmares. I'd hear a tone or two and wake up freezing. I told Kenny about it… ugh, maybe all of once, but I felt that, as long as Kyle could help talk me through them, they were just post-traumatic nightmares, not prophecies or anything. And I hadn't wanted to bring up unnecessary pain in Kenny's own heart and mind about the events that had transpired around then.

Now seemed like a more reasonable time to bring that fact up, which I knew I'd have to do before I took any more stock in Wilcox's paintings. I hadn't had any nightmares lately; hadn't dreamt much at all, really, which was kind of nice. Oh, I'd fallen asleep worried, sure, I mean, we were still in the middle of that odd struggle against the GSM, but I'd wake up, more often than not, next to Kyle, who'd smile to remind me that, all League things considered, I had a damn good thing going.

I didn't want them to start. One can rely on substances (preferably legal) to shake bad thoughts, but can't exactly take anything for nightmares. There's no way I know of to chose what to dream at night.

But I had a feeling I'd be seeing spirals. That I might wake up dizzy. That I'd worry in my sleep about what other people were dreaming about. Like Karen and Kenny—how the new Shadow was affecting them. Like Red, caught in the middle of both the Shadow plight and the Ginger insurrection. Like Kyle, whose mind I could pick during the day and whose calming breath helped me rest. Who had just begun questioning possible new direction his own innate ability might be able to take.

While I was in my waking hours, though, all I could currently think about was how oddly unprepared we were. The GSM had caught us off guard, and now it seemed that Damien would start narrowing things down, getting more specific with each of us. How he'd slithered his way into the GSM was a mystery, but nothing we could count as an odd move on his part.

"I don't get it," Red said after we'd hit another wall and fallen into another spiral. "If Damien's the one sending the letters, why would anyone join?"

"Well, I mean, _we_ didn't even know till now," Kyle pointed out. "I'm just gonna play the 'you and I have more common sense than your average mob member' card, though."

"True enough," Red agreed. "I'm getting kind of freaked about Tenorman, though. Where's he fit in?"

"Hey, guys," Ike interrupted. "Everyone's favorite radio program's on. Shut up a little, eh?"

He held a hand up to silence the room, while Karen, sidling up beside him, turned up the computer's volume so we could listen to the broadcast.

"Listeners of the town of South Park."

Shit. Judging from Kenny and Cartman's similar sudden reactions to the voice that crackled in over the air, that was Damien's own voice making the announcement. He certainly was having his fun with us, wasn't he?

I vaguely recognized the oddly cheerful music in the background as the suite from _Carnival of the Animals._ Wendy had taken me to a concert once, in middle school, at which the suite had been played. Her own pursed-lips silence proved that she recognized the song, as well, though whether or not that particular date was of any present interest was hopefully neither here nor there.

What interested me was Damien's choice to directly address the issue of the Carnival.

"In anticipation of our coming Carnival, we have been playing a game. A bit of a secret sweepstakes, if you will."  
Kyle held his breath. He was right.

"Our volunteers have been working round the clock to bring this town one hell of an event."

"I _bet,"_ Kenny scoffed.

"But before we can begin, we must, of course, reward those of you so dutifully listening to our program. Some prizes have already been awarded—"

"That _ASSHOLE,"_ Kenny snapped.

"—to the few most worthy of their respective winnings. The best, as they say, is yet to come."

There was nothing but the fading out of _Carnival of the Animals_ for a moment, and then a scream. While everyone in the room winced, some of us, myself and Kyle included, covering our ears, Damien's voice came on again, nice and loud, so that everyone had the opportunity to hear him shout, "Fill what void remains, Mysterion! If you can find it!"

Then, the transmission crackled out completely, and the room was dead with silence.

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

We were being had. Every last one of us. Had by a child of Hell. Whether or not he needed any of the rest of us, he definitely had his sights set on Kenny—on Mysterion, on the Shadow—for something bigger than we'd expected.

Damien had risen to play some kind of game with the Shadow League, using re-awakened nightmares as a means of catching us off our guard. He was calling things like the opportunity to join Tenorman's Ginger army, Kyle's quirk, and Kenny's curse _prizes._ I was starting to wonder whether or not the Carnival was mostly just a metaphor, rather than a physical place.

This was just an 'attraction.' Our summer thus far had been filled with nothing but sideshow curiosities. The letters, for one. Liane Cartman, for another.

It was looking pretty likely that, if the Shadow wasn't the main event, some new nightmare like Cthulhu had to be.

God, Kenny was keeping his anger about his revived powers bottled up well. He may still have been in shock. He probably would be for a while.

Noting this, Clyde stepped it up as team captain—oh, here I go again; I've quit playing and I still think in football terms—and turned to the group at the computers. "Signal, or anything?" he wondered.

Ike frowned at his tablet screen. "Yeah," he mumbled. "Kinda figured."

"What?"

"It's a mobile signal. They're transmitting from the helicopter."

_"That_ makes it easy to catch these bastards," Kyle complained.

"Gripes the asshole who can fucking fly," Cartman muttered.

"Oh, fuck off," Kyle retaliated, at the same time Kenny barked, "You are _not_ in a position to talk right now."

"You don't think I'm pissed at my mom?" Cartman hollered, leaping out of his chair and leaning over the edge of the table. "Goddamn bitch lied to me and kept shit from me my whole li—"

"Join the _fucking club!"_ Kenny roared, going red in the face. His girlfriend set a hand on his arm carefully, in hopes of cooling him off somewhat.

Cartman, unfortunately, was the town's best provoker of unwanted conversation. "I _am_ the club, motherfucker!" he snapped. "This is all _bullshit!"_

"Calm down," Wendy groaned.

"Calm down yourself, bitch!"

"Ex_cuse_ me," Token defended her against Cartman.

_"HOLY FUCKING SHIT. EVERYONE SHUT UP!"_

Clyde's commanding tone did the words justice. As if he'd simply pressed _mute,_ all noise in the room ceased. Cartman's jaw still hung slack as he prepared another prickish comeback, and Kenny's skin was still tinted an angry red from his outburst. For the most part, I saw looks of guilt around the table, as others (myself probably included) tried hard to show their lack of involvement.

_"Thank_ you," Clyde said, evening out his tone. "Now, look. I really don't like what I'm seeing at this table. Aren't we a team, guys? I mean it. Look around."

Met with some hesitation—_Craig—_we did.

I felt awful. Not because I was one of the ones instigating the present argument… maybe because I was steering myself out of it. God knows I've seen enough of people arguing in my life. I'd always felt pretty lucky when it came to my friendships. I mean, take something like me and Wendy. We hardly even had to have the 'are we still friends' conversation after we broke up. We just knew we were, and we always could be. Or my friendship with Clyde: we'd been football co-captains, roommates… and he'd been a little upset when I decided to quit after our most recent season, but it was water under the bridge. Kenny—Kenny had saved me from death; I still kinda owed the guy.

But I don't like fighting with any of them. I couldn't bear to lose anyone around that table.

Even though that kind of thing happens. It happens, and I hate it. We had a great group, and it was painful to just be arguing about something that could, with work, be overcome.

Underneath all of the arguments, all of the talk of curses and Damien and Cartman and R'lyeh was a fear that clenched all of us, but that none of us had yet addressed that summer, due to how helter-skelter this Carnival thing had forced things to be: the League's future. Once Karen left town; once some of us would take jobs outside of South Park.

Or the question of if we would stay. Stay, to continue the League, or leave, keeping it in our lives in some way, but otherwise moving on to other things. No, we had not addressed any of that. Because Damien had reared his awful head and was individually targeting everyone in our well-knit group.

Clyde had every reason to bitch at us.

"We are a _team,"_ he reiterated. His intensity was enough to tell me that, whatever happened to the rest of us, South Park was definitely going to be seeing plenty of Mosquito in the future. Clyde was a team-minded guy. He lived for things like this. And, like many of us, had almost died for it, as well. "We didn't get here by being separate groups. Remember? We're a League. We're the _Shadow League._ Stan gave us a good name, guys, and the Shadow's resurgence may be something we weren't expecting, but it's happened, and we owe what we are to Mysterion. We are fucking _allied under the Shadow,_ so damned if I'm going to just sit here listening to you guys wank at each other!

"We need to _prioritize,"_ Clyde went on, smacking a fist down on the table. "That's how we get shit _done._ So yeah. Maybe we're all gonna drive each other—well, you know… we're just, we're gonna argue." Nice save, there, Clyde. "For fuck's sake, we've been doing this for years. But _Jesus,_ guys. Let's handle this together. All right? Otherwise, the bullet points on this board mean shit all nothing. Now are we going to yell about cow shit like the Greeley debate team or are we going to get to _WORK?"_

I almost wanted to applaud. (Hell, I had half a mind to suggest him as a future mayor if I were more convinced he could shut the fuck up sometimes about his sexual exploits, but that's another story.) Clyde had a way with words. Sure, sometimes he had to shout them, but he damn well got his point across. He was a natural leader, and not only did Kenny recognize that, the League did. There had been a point, a couple years ago, when Cartman had voiced a complaint along the lines of, "God, Clyde, who died and made you leader?" To which Kenny had reminded him that _he had, about two hundred times._ Which shut Cartman up, and nobody had anything bad to say about Clyde since.

When his words hit home visually in everyone, Clyde nodded to the group, relaxed, and said, "Thanks. Now we're gonna get somewhere. Let's start at the top. The Shadow."

The board now read:_ THE SHADOW._ Underneath that, _Damien. Tenorman/GSM. Location?_ Then, _Liane Cartman—Jack Tenorman—Cthulhu._

"Oh, look," Kyle whispered to me as he slouched back in his seat. "It's fatass's family tree. What the fuck."

"Mmhmm," I half-agreed, not wanting to get caught talking shit after Clyde's speech.

"All right," said Kenny. "First thing's first. This Shadow might not be the same as the one I was bound to before. Which would be a really fucking good thing. Not that this is in any way _good,_ but whatever. But it's definitely a warning of some sort."

"We're being tested," Kyle re-stated, giving the group his opinion. "We've gotta be."

"Tenorman made reference to R'lyeh, kinda, on the asylum walls," I added.

"Ike, we got full visual on those?" Kenny asked, raising his voice.

"Archiving them now," Ike assured him.

Kenny scribbled down _tests, games, prizes._ "The fuck even is this, Damien?" he growled at the board. "This is fucking chaos."

"Oh, jeez."

Kenny turned to look toward Butters, who had gone from kneading his knuckles to chewing on an end of his hair. Because of his frequent cross-dressing and switching of personal pronouns, Butters liked to keep his hair to his shoulders. But the boy was giving himself some pretty bad split-ends. "I didn't mean that," Kenny said quickly.

"No, but—well, I mean, it's kinda true," Butters said, already a nervous wreck. "I-it is a chaotic thing. What's happening. And—w-well, I just—"

"Butters, say something fucking useful for once," Cartman snapped.

"I'm getting to it!" Butters yelled back. "All's I'm trying to bring up is that if Damien's treating this like some kinda game, who's to say he's not gonna play dirty? Always makin' us deal with things in the past that hurt us? I mean, Kenny, you got that power back, and that's horrible. And Cartm—E-Eric, he dug so deep he went right for your mom, and I'm real sorry to hear that."

"Sorry that he's fucking _half-brothers_ with _Satan's kid?"_ Kenny shouted.

"Maybe I just feel sorry for everyone!" Butters defended himself. "That's all."

Kenny looked like he was ready to say more, then sighed, letting his anger subside. Especially when it looked like Clyde was about to bang his proverbial gavel again. "You're right," he said instead of continuing into an argument. "Thanks. Yes. This isn't gonna be easy, and yes, Damien's going for the throat, it seems."

"So where's Tenorman even place on here?" Token wondered, to provoke further thought on the overlying issue. "Other than, you know, his dad being a Cultist and the whole 'kill everyone but Gingers' thing."

"Other than _that…_ Tenorman is either being played, or…" Kenny offered. He cut himself off.

None of us wanted to say it, but we were dealing with the devil's son, here. Damien had to have some kind of motive for returning to Earth after so long, and collecting souls didn't seem too out of the realm of possibility.

The stillness was solidarity. We were all in immediate agreement that Tenorman may well have sold his soul for something. Revenge against Cartman? Possibly. But that seemed trite, even for someone whose life was built around a horrible grudge.

"I'm willing to bet they're both after you," Kenny said dourly, looking at Cartman. Cartman did not raise his eyes. He didn't say a thing. He only so rarely went into shock so bad that he had nothing to contribute, so the rest of us in the room were forced to accept that he really had no idea about anything we were currently faced with. "Tenorman and Damien."

"You think?" Karen prompted.

"Well, let's think about this," I said. "Guys, what _if_ this is all a test? I mean, let's get this kinda basic to start, right? Yeah, Damien's here, and yeah, this is disturbing as shit, but…"

"Can you guys go back a second?" Ike asked. When Kenny asked for clarification, Ike said as an amendment, "Like, how many years out are we talking? When'd he first come here? I don't have that down."

"Third grade," said Cartman, his voice dull. "Fuckin' asshole tried to sabotage my bi—"

Kenny's marker squeaked across the board as he spun in shock from the realization. Kyle and I tightened our grip on each other so hard we both winced. Yes, it was disturbing to think about, but it at least gave us something else to work off of:

When Cartman's birthday had rolled around that year, his mother had thrown him an outrageously lavish party, which we all more or less expected. Liane Cartman would probably be paying off loans for trips and parties forever (unless the funds all came from her not-so-secret benefactors), and she had really spared no expense that year.

Because she had thrown him a carnival.

I thought back to the paintings, now of all times. Fraud, Wrath—sins… Damien… both Limbo and R'lyeh had been represented in the works of Wilcox and his ancestors. Something connected Hell to that place beyond the Gate in a dimension separate from yet once linked to our own. The Shadow had been the vessel for the Old Ones, Cthulhu and his ilk, said within the Cult to provide those old gods to rise and bring madness to the world.

After madness would surely come something more Apocalyptic.

I glanced at the board again. Liane Cartman was the link between a representative of the Cthulhu Cult and the dictator of Hell. There was a child on either side of the spectrum—and one right in the middle.

"Cartman…" Kenny said, his voice shaking as badly as his hands had been at the board, "you're an outlier."

"I'm not a liar. He really was here on my—"

"An _outlier,"_ Kenny stressed. "A… you're a missing link."

Something clicked in Cartman's head—what, I don't even want to venture to guess, but he'd been convinced of something. Convinced that he had importance in a matter that he'd already been linked to. That Kenny and Karen had been tied to since birth. That even Clyde had a place in, way back in his bloodline, and that all of us had been entangled with.

"Cthulhu is dead," Kenny continued, crossing out _Cthulhu_ on the board. He looked at it, then scribbled on it further, bearing down hard so that the word was barely discernable between the extra marks. "Therefore, Cthulhu's Shadow is dead. Whatever the hell _this_ is…" He shuddered, and held out his hand. The shadow of it curled and formed again below him, on the table. I shivered. "Whatever this is, it's… it feels different. It reeks of R'lyeh, but something's off, too."

"Do, um… do you think this Damien guy has access to your… you know, your _files_ or something?" Karen asked her brother, each word spoken more nervously than the one that preceded it. "You had a lot of deaths, Kenny. And I, um… I think about the afterlife a lot, awful as that is."

"How so?" I wondered, before I knew I'd spoken.

Karen drummed her fingers on the table, looked up at Kenny, then at the scribbled out word _Cthulhu._ "I just wonder what it's like for the people in charge of it," Karen admitted. "Like, the rules of Heaven and Hell. R'lyeh, according to you guys, didn't have rules. Hell _must._ Like, there've gotta be files or something. I can't imagine there aren't. What if everyone lives on a track, and we're just adding to our file while we're alive? I'd be willing to bet, Kenny, you've got a bunch of different files."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and like… _was_ there a link between Hell and R'lyeh?"

Kenny wrote down _Spaces Between_ on the whiteboard. "I wouldn't rule it out."

"Can you get to the part where I'm an outlier?" Cartman spoke up.

The sibling pair scowled at him, then shared a sigh that prompted things to continue. "So what I was saying," Kenny explained, crossing out _Cthulhu_ once more for good measure, "is that we never really, you know, sorted you out. As in, the Cult tried to use you once, too. It didn't work out.

"If Damien's older than you—and… honest to God, dude, your stupid fucking mom…" For once, Cartman did not argue. Which, oddly enough, sent a chill around the room. "Anyway, if Damien's older… ugh, I don't even want to be talking about this shit, but, maybe his 'older sibling' status had something to do with why Jack Tenorman couldn't give you the same curse I ended up getting."

"You mean—"

Kenny grit his teeth, and I swear I could hear them gnash, all the way from the other side of the table. "What I think I'm saying is that you couldn't become the Shadow because you were meant for something else. The Cult couldn't have you because Satan's already got something in mind."

Oh goody fucking joy.

I could practically feel Kyle's blood rush beside me. He looked like he was halfway between a laugh and a scream, but too full of thoughts provoking each to muster a sound. In a way, we'd been waiting to learn something like this our entire lives. Growing up, Cartman was a little devil in his own right, a downright self-made anti-Christ, who made life miserable for Kyle. And Wendy. And Butters. And—just about everyone who wasn't _him._ Kenny and I put up with him for the most part, but he was always a dick, and pushing the limit, and pushing and pushing and never getting caught.

If I could read minds, I just knew that Kyle's thoughts in that instant were, _I fucking knew it._

So, though, were Cartman's thoughts. Only for a much, much different reason.

Mr. Ego just got another boost.

"Oh, who's the one with the creepy prophecy _now?"_ he gloated.

"How the _fuck_ are you_ happy about this?"_ Kenny had to know. "Jesus. UGH. Where's an actual fucking hint to this shit when we need it?"

Cartman was the tie between R'lyeh and Hell, while Kenny had been the link between R'lyeh and Earth. All I knew was: we had to keep that guy in our sights and on our good side. He'd mellowed out in recent years, sure, even enough for us to count him as more of a friend, but if the universe was just _begging_ for us to mistrust him—

_WE SHALL BUILD THE NEW BETWEEN._

That was what Scott Tenorman had written on the wall of his room at the South Park asylum. Kenny and I had it right on the money, too: Spaces Between. The gaps between R'lyeh and our world were still open.

Whatever Tenorman may have sold his soul for, it wasn't going to be something pretty. "The paintings," I said to remind the group. I couldn't let the thought go. "Kenny, that's our lead. I think that whatever 'game' this is that Damien's telling us we're playing, there's something in the paintings."

With no hesitation, Kenny wrote _Wilcox—gallery thing_ on the whiteboard. "Right," he said, then clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth a few times. "You're absolutely right, Stan. Right. Guys, we're up against some weird shit right now, but this is where we're gonna get our answers."

"Some fuckin' art show's gonna tell me how I'm important to—" Cartman started.

"Shut. Up." Kenny's shoulders tensed, and he spoke the words very profoundly, so that they would not instigate, but so that he remained calm. "We are going to _work_ on it. Maybe it took fuckin' Henrietta to remind me that I've gotta be patient about certain things, but if we wait for this, it's going to pay off.

"June sixth. Mark the date, guys," Kenny said, writing down the date in huge letters. He scowled at the board when he realized that he'd written _6/6._ One to go. He shook his head. "We're all going to that gallery opening, like it or not. I've got a feeling I know who the guest of honor is."

No kidding.

We continued hashing shit out until we were dead tired. Preliminary assignments for the night of June sixth were passed around, and Ike kept track of everyone's ideas. It was good that we were, just as Clyde had been insisting, working as the team we all knew we could be, even though there was still strain in the air, and would be until we figured out exactly what part Cartman was meant to play in the mythos we thought we'd left behind us.

When the others had left the base, Kenny demanded that Cartman stay for more of a talk, and to go over the old notes about R'lyeh, but while Karen tugged Cartman off to the side to start going through the file cabinets, Kenny caught up with me and Kyle, handing off to me the portfolio of Wilcox's works he said he'd received from Henrietta. I regretted not staying at the coffee house to talk to the Goth longer, earlier that day, but there was only so much that could be done.

"I want you to see these," he told me. "Sorry if it brings up anything bad for you, but… I don't know, dude, I feel like you're the one to take on shit about the paintings. I can only keep my head in one place right now, guys, I'm sorry."

"Hey, I understand," I told him.

"You're handling this awfully well," Kyle added as a compliment. "You really think the Shadow's different?"

Kenny ran a hand down the spine of the leather-bound portfolio and leveled out his breath. "Cthulhu is dead," he said firmly. "I killed him, and I watched the Shadow destroy itself. This thing's got me by the lungs, sure, but I think that's cuz the ability's tied to my breath. I'm not putting a stopper on what Damien might be capable of. Being the Shadow was hell for me. He did this to make us think."

"As long as you're convinced, dude," I said, smiling to show my support. "Whatever you do, sleep, okay?"

"You've gotten sick over this shit before," Kyle reminded him. "Don't let Cartman hog the attention and make you lose rest."

Kenny's mouth twisted to the side, and then he cracked a grin. Finally, he let out a full, real laugh. While we stood there, confused, Kenny grabbed us in around our necks, and pressed his head between our shoulders. "I liked you guys better when you were my bros and not my dads," he let out with his next laugh. "But thanks, guys, I mean it." I let myself grin while I could. In being friends with Kenny, I'd take whatever the hell family label he wanted to slap on any of us. Clyde was right: we were a team. We had to keep things solid.

We exchanged a few lighter words in departing, and I left with the portfolio tucked under my arm.

"How's your head?" I asked Kyle as we slowly walked the path that would lead us back to the Blacks' luxurious garage to claim my car.

"Fine, but forget me for a second," Kyle said. "How're you?"

"Huh?"

"We haven't talked about it in a while, and you looked kinda pale when Kenny gave you that book, Stan," my boyfriend said softly, taking hold of my free hand as we slowed our pace further. "You had pretty bad dreams for a while after R'lyeh. Anything lately?"

I managed a small but nervous laugh, and squeezed his hand. "You sure you can't read people, Kyle?" I asked.

"Finding people on a radar isn't the same as knowing what you're thinking about," he said, taking the comment slightly literally. "I already hate those paintings enough. I don't want you getting nightmares you don't need."

"Thanks," I told him. "I am kinda getting worried about that, too, though."

"So let me know, okay?" Kyle walked a little closer, and leaned in to kiss my cheek. I hadn't realized how shocked and numb I'd been feeling from the Damien conversation until that simple, sweet action warmed me. "We're in this together."

Always had been, always would be. We'd seen each other through more than our share of troubles, so we'd take this mission on as a unit, too, working the only way we could.

We stayed up late together that night, stretched out on the floor of my room with the portfolio of paintings in front of us. Unease settled in with every twisted image of one of the Old Ones that Wilcox had filed into his personal gallery.

We stopped after seeing Wilcox's representation of the Shadow, knowing we'd get no sleep at all if we continued on to study his current visions of sins. After all, we did have a gallery party to attend, fairly soon. In the meantime, we decided, we'd brave the awful chills we both got from the nightmares within the frames and study the real paintings in the meantime. We couldn't react too harshly until we had all the facts. Facts hanging on the walls of the Goths' gallery space.

The gallery event was only days away, and we were going to use them to our full advantage. Maybe there was no way to stay a step ahead of a devil, but we'd had it with being played. If Hell was coming for all of us individually, we had to prepare for it, and fortify ourselves. Someday, we'd free ourselves of nightmares. If we had to win Damien's Carnival game to do it, well then, so be it.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Note:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

All right! Getting closer now~ ^^ More on both Dante and Lovecraft references to come, too. When we first started working on this story—mid-_Cthulhu Fhtagn—_we started noticing the huge trend in carnival themes... (And not just in _South Park;_ a lot of music we both listen to has recently kinda gone the carnival route… and when writing an _SP_ story, we'll probably be making the odd reference… plus, probably some inevitable superhero references here and there, as before, as well as the fact that—I totally should've mentioned this earlier—we may at least inadvertently reference the fact that this is a sequel, haha... XD) Even though in the early seasons the guys' birthdays were unclear, we _had_ to keep to that part of canon for this. :3 We're having fun with this so far, but I'm getting excited for what's coming up with the gallery event; I've been waiting to get to writing out that part. ^^

Thank you so much for reading! And to those who have faved, followed, and left comments thus far, yay! We'd love to hear your thoughts, it's always encouraging to keep us on our toes as we hope to improve as writers. ^^; Our hope is to deliver a good story, and while these early chapters may have a hint of confusion to them, there are answers and connections very soon to come.

Next week we'll go into multiple narrations for the first time; just keeping things moving along. Gonna be seeing Damien again, soon too… ^^ See you next **Wednesday, July 25****th****!** :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	6. Ep 6: The Spaces Within the Circle

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kenny_

I had always considered my little sister to be an angel. I could not be more proud of her, I thought, every single day, only for her to step up, for her to go above and beyond, for her to prove herself a hero to me, as all the while I still wanted to remain a hero to her.

When we were little, I would come to her window as Mysterion, to reassure her, in her times of sorrow, that she'd be all right. That I would protect her. And she would say to me, _"Guardian angel, I feel safe whenever I see your shadow."_ I would see her writing notes to Mysterion that she left at her window. I kept every single one. She even wrote me a poem once.

Ten years prior, when I was eleven and she only seven years old, Karen had repeated her faith in me: _"Even when it's just your shadow, angel, I know it's you. Your shadow protects me."_

_ "Your shadow protects me."_

That was before I had known. Before the Cult of Cthulhu had unfurled their plans for me, before I had defeated the Shadow of Cthulhu once and for all. I had seen it destroy itself, watched as it died, as the last of R'lyeh crumbled into the Gate to re-join the Void, far, far out into the cold expanses of space.

The thing that latched like pith onto my lungs now made me feel like I was choking not on failure, but on a warning. The chalky taste in my mouth was not the dust of the forgotten city below the sea.

I tasted brimstone.

Charcoal.

Death.

I knew the taste of death, and it was bitter, burnt and sour all at once.

Whatever Shadow it was Damien had sent me, he'd probably made it himself, that dirty bastard.

As if I wanted more on my fucking plate. I was midway between being floored and not at all surprised to have overhead the conversation between Liane Cartman and her son. Her son who I'd then screamed at until I was hoarse, because for fuck's sake I had to let out my anger _some_how.

There was something to be said for the fact that Cartman came back to the base willingly when Token found him at the library—hidden away in the town archives section, of all places… and while I suppose that could have meant he was doing something useful, I wanted to doubt it. But then he just let me yell at him.

I started screaming that it was all his fault. His whole disgusting family: his crack whore mom who'd put out for twisted fucks like Jack Tenorman and, oh, _the devil;_ his Cultist father who'd managed to at least give Cartman a small but significant link to Cthulhu; his paternal half-brother, still unheard from, very likely Nyarlathotep-grade insane, and therefore formidable and unpredictable.

And Damien. His maternal, dead-from-birth half-brother.

"Slap me!" I'd shouted at Cartman when he'd first returned to the base. "Punch me across the face and wake me the fuck up! This is a Goddamn nightmare!"

He'd only given me this odd, numbed look and said, hollowly, "I've been wantin' to wake up all fuckin' afternoon, are you kidding me, asshole?"

"Don't you dare start mocking _me,"_ I yelled back. "Your mother was a fucking vessel for a _demon, _and then she had you! It's _your fault_ this shit's happening again. It's your fault Damien sent me _this."_

I lifted my arms out to my sides, and saw Cartman display a fair amount of shock as the shadows in the room began converging around me. But all in all, our conversation (my yell fest, rather) was just one accusation after the other.

When I gave Cartman room to talk, all he told me was how pissed off he himself was at his mother. Which… looking back on things, he never really was. Oh, when we were kids he'd yell and throw tantrums to get his way just like any spoiled little bastard with sociopathic tendencies would do, but seeing him too angry to even yell was what finally alerted me to the fact that even he was taking the news hard.

I knew damn well what it was like to have, shall we say, mommy issues. My mother lied my entire life, and not even necessarily to protect me. To protect _Karen,_ maybe. I bought that my parents may have liked her. But I'd been a curse to my parents, my mother especially, and I knew it. She'd been my ticket home after my several deaths from the age of four till the age of sixteen. I would have thought that maybe she'd mention something about my Immortality to my face, but she never did, and meanwhile she and my father were running one hell of an abusive household. Karen and I were glad to have gotten out, and moved on.

Cartman, it seemed, hadn't had it all that much better. We'd learned when we were kids that Liane had been covering for the Denver Broncos to keep his father a secret, but to hide away other trysts that might have had some serious repercussions later in life for both of them? Nope. Underneath all of her motherly sweetness, Liane Cartman was one haunted, disturbed woman.

I don't think Cartman was able to accept that.

Oh, but he sure as hell liked hearing that he might be the missing piece of some crazy cosmic puzzle we in the League had still to solve in the wake of my having destroyed the Gate to R'lyeh.

As an Immortal, I had been able to travel between planes of existence, by way of shadows. When I died, I could, with Henrietta's help with placating Yog-Sothoth, send my soul straight to R'lyeh from Limbo… I'd even seen bits and pieces of shadow portals throughout Hell.

I thought I'd been attentive, over the past four years. Henrietta had contacts in Arkham, Massachusetts, the primary location for archives on documents and artifacts linked to the Old Ones. We'd destroyed several items already. We'd made a legal case (well, she had mostly; I kind of owed her for that…) to shut down Miskatonic University. The University library had been demolished, and with it ancient prayers to please Cthulhu. Gone. A great deal of it, gone. We'd done good things. We had done what was right.

So where was the leak?

What had I missed?

Everything was currently pointing to the Spaces Between being a part of the answer. Without conversing with Henrietta, though, I could only trust my own speculations to a certain extent. When it came to dealings with the afterlife (and the things that just plain disregarded it… I'm looking at you, Old Ones that still exist out there somewhere), the three people I trusted to speak to before any others were Henrietta, Karen, and Stan. More or less in that order.

The fact that Cartman seemed so _fatefully_ bent to overshadow (ugh) my own place in the hierarchy that had existed among the beings in R'lyeh was disturbing, and I didn't want to think about it. And therefore didn't want to talk to him. If he was somehow a link from Hell to R'lyeh…

I just could not wrap my head around it.

Funny that my head was going to feel clearer once I was in a dark apartment full of clove and tobacco smoke.

For the time being, however, I just had to get Cartman out. Out of my head, out of my house, and out of my way. At the end of the meeting, the night after Damien had _so fucking generously_ sent me a nightmare through the mail, I made Cartman linger back only a little, both of us knowing he wasn't going to be there very long.

"Look," I said, once I'd bid farewell to the others and had plenty enough to chew on for a while, "maybe I'm getting touchy at you, but _fuck,_ Cartman, this shit is more than I was ready for."

"You don't _say," _he mewed back at me sarcastically. "Sad you're not the only one wh—"

"Shut up," I interrupted. I hadn't sat down all evening, and I wasn't sure he was much in the mood for resting at the moment, either. "You pissed me off enough when you mentioned wishing you'd been an Immortal. Don't you dare milk this Damien shit."

_"You're_ obsessing over it," he pointed out, eyes narrowed but still rather blank.

"Well, maybe I need to," I snapped. "Maybe this is something worth obsessing over, and something you should b—"

"Be what, concerned about?" Cartman guessed. He gave me an awful, betrayed look, and said, "Are you seriously just _assuming _I'm gonna fuck up somehow?"

"You seem pretty pleased to be part of a prophecy," I snorted.

"Least I'm not gonna cry about it like you did!"

"You didn't die every other day for years on end!" I hollered.

"Um," Karen tried.

I'd nearly forgotten she was there. Karen was a wonderful referee, when it came to ending unnecessary arguments. She was a voice of reason whenever I got too worked up, and understood the value of patience, where I was a fan of doing whatever needed to be done in order to get immediate answers.

Unfortunately, I was also rather fast to choose suspects in cases. The cases that were too close to home, at least. With the Gingers, Scott Tenorman, and now Damien all more or less linked, I felt that I had even more reason to be wary of Eric Cartman. But the look on Karen's face told me, _Don't make him angry._

True. He'd diverted twice before. And third time's the charm, as they say, right? No, we could not afford for Cartman to bail and pick up another venture now.

I'd told him I would give him the mission he wanted, much earlier in the day, and I felt that I needed to keep to my word, though hopefully I could do so in a way that would still allow me a watchful eye on every possible upcoming situation.

Karen's calming tone placated both Cartman and myself into more civil conversation, finding the three of us looking over the whiteboard, and what we had as evidence thus far. "And that thing with your mother…?" I prompted, when we stood at the cork board.

We were looking over Ike's print-out of the GSM decal. Three rows of three circles, joined together by one broken one. Red in color and simple in design, but a terror to think about; it was taunting me.

"I don't even want to talk to her right now," Cartman muttered.

"You'll have to, eventually," I reminded him firmly.

"I _know,_ Kenny, _God._ Just—I just don't wanna fucking go back tonight cuz all's she's gonna do is cry at me an' shit and I don't wanna hear it."

Karen glanced up at me, and ticked her head at the cork board. I studied the poster that Clyde and Craig had brought in for a moment, then shifted my eyes to Ike's red ticket. Liane Cartman had planned a carnival-themed birthday party for her son in third grade, which Damien Thorn had attended with the rest of us; Cartman himself had then thrown a _chili-con-carnival_ at which he'd fed Scott Tenorman his own parents. Tenorman had turned around, once his despair had turned to madness, recruited the county Gingers into a league that, at a warehouse carnival, had fed Cartman the truth about his father.

Now a new Carnival loomed, directly threatening and recruiting the red-heads and relatives not already a part of the Movement. I thought about Butters's find, in regards to the girl I'd always remembered calling Powder in school. Sally Turner was all the proof I needed that whatever the new recruits were being offered, it had to have been enticing, otherwise I couldn't imagine just anyone dropping their lives and working for the devil.

Whether or not Tenorman had sold his soul was debatable.

_Red Devil/Red Hair,_ it read on Ike's ticket.

They were working together. But to what end? And, I couldn't help but wonder, who was the real mastermind, here? Was this all just some twisted joke that would allow Tenorman to get back at Cartman, or what?

The radio programs seemed to negate that idea pretty easily. Damien was planning something huge… probably using the Gingers as a means of keeping us and the town busy, so that he could only make appearances when he needed to. He just _had_ to go and pick visiting the Cartman house first, though.

Just to get me riled up? Maybe. To weaken Cartman? Also a possibility. But Cartman couldn't be beaten down, not easily, anyway. Hardly anything scratched the surface of his ego to make him feel inferior. He was thick in many ways, and most of the time, I hated that. But hopefully he'd at least be stubborn enough to stick with us and not go over the edge and join those other two. We really didn't need that, especially with the future of the League still rather undetermined.

"Sorry," I managed to say. "It must suck."

"It _does,_ thank you very much," Cartman snorted.

"Yeah, I feel great about having a Shadow with a mind of its own again, thanks for asking," I grumbled.

"Okay, you both got shit ends of the stick," Karen interrupted. "Can we please not argue, and be productive if we're all sticking around? Please?"

Cartman glared at me; I glared back. I gave in first, and wondered if I should have stuck it out a little longer. "You can stay here if you need to," I offered grudgingly. "I mean, option's always there for anyone, you've got a room. I'm gonna get some work done, so—"

"I'll think about it."

"Are you serious about still working, Kenny?" Karen wanted to know.

"Gonna read through some stuff, at least… maybe—"

I really didn't want to, but I had to get a grip on that Shadow. Whatever it was, however it was connected to me, however linked to R'lyeh or to Hell the thing happened to be, I had to figure out a way that I could ignore it. I was fairly certain that Damien wanted me using it. He wouldn't have sent it, otherwise.

A _prize,_ my ass. My real prize had been beating my curse. Calling it memory. I did not want the burden of that again. Part of me simply wanted to believe that Damien had some sort of jealous streak going, that he hadn't cashed in on the insanity of four years prior. Missed your chance to play, idiot; we weren't up for a forced second round.

"Whatever we do, though, I just need some fucking water," I realized. Probably wouldn't help if I went delusional by not taking care of myself. Stan and Kyle's parting words had helped a fair deal; I did need to watch how hard I worked. I'd sleep, I told myself. I'd just get a lot done first.

The good news was, Cartman did end up leaving after a while, getting an offer to stay with Wendy and Butters. Which must have been awkward central and I was kind of bummed to be missing out on the fur sure to fly if those three remained housemates, but at least it got him out of my hair for the night.

Red, too, had gone home, though she and I had the understanding that I would spare no details if and when she asked me how things were going.

The facts were there: I had an active Shadow again. Words from R'lyeh did not slither through my mind as I felt it course through my body; I felt strung to it in an interesting way. While the Shadow of Cthulhu had been who I was from birth, and what I had been until its destruction, I discovered, that night, something about Damien's 'gift' that truly disturbed me:

I felt trapped by it. Strung to it like a marionette. It was the ball and chain around my foot. It felt like a sentence, rather than a curse. For what crime, I was not sure. For how long… well, I had a feeling only Damien could tell me that.

Since I couldn't very well just go seek him out right away, I talked over my fears with my sister. We eventually made our way out into the training field, where the guys had been working off their own steam earlier.

One of the target dummies had been incinerated. I felt myself grin upon seeing that. Despite everything, at least I had a strong team, who kept pushing themselves to be stronger. Token had better and better armor, Stan's proficiency with those tools, Clyde's marksmanship, and Wendy and Ike's swordsmanship were skills that handful of League members had been honing and perfecting for quite some time. Then there was Kyle: maybe he'd go about it a little reluctantly, but I was confident he'd step it up with that psychic quirk of his pretty soon. He had all the right encouragement.

But, damn, man… we had _Craig,_ too. He'd done a number on that target. Way to use what you've got, dude.

Though I guess I kind of was charged to do the same. Standing out there with Karen, at a time of day with shadows cast only from the lights Kyle had hung from the trees surrounding our field, I worked through my fears. And my options.

"You really doubt I'm Immortal again?" I double-checked with her.

Karen nodded. "It's just… something is off," she reiterated.

"We're being tested?" I sighed, repeating what my two closest friends had already said.

"We're being tested."

"Why?"

"If he's the son of the devil, Kenny, I don't know," Karen said nervously. "Are you going to use the new Shadow?"

"I don't want to," I said, rather quickly.

"All right…"

The shadows on the ground around me began to reach toward mine. All that filled my head was thought upon thought of how I could convince myself that this Shadow was different. It didn't speak to me. It wasn't a part of me. So what the fuck was it?

And, more importantly, were there stones we had left unturned?

As far as I knew, without the option of going directly to Damien, there was only one other person who might have an answer for me. Only one person with something I'd accept, anyway.

– – –

Karen made me wait it out for a little while before I went to Henrietta. In the long run, I knew that it was a good call. But again, I was the impatient sibling.

Karen and I had learned from our parents, on the day we had left home, that my first rebirth had been on Karen's exact birthday. As pseudo-twins, we had been realizing our parallels over the past few years, and now began to wonder how much stock we'd need to put into the oddity surrounding both of our births.

She was the patient one, the guiding light, reason. The Guardian Angel that kept watch over the city: rarely seen, but ever loved. I was impatient, a man of the shadows, tough but reasonable. I'm Mysterion: since the age of nine, a symbol that the town can rally behind.

Both of us operated on the principle that everyone has heroic qualities; we just happened to be the ones that acted upon them. But we never revealed ourselves. No one in the League did, not to just anyone. Those who knew never spread the information… and may not have been believed, even if they did.

Henrietta Biggle, though she rarely explicitly stated it, also seemed to take stock in the duality that tied Karen and I together both as a sibling pair and a vigilante duo. She took Karen's word as closely as she took mine, and while the other two Goths may have complained about Karen's involvement at the shop, I knew that Henrietta appreciated having her around, since Karen and I were at the core of the Shadow League.

So, for a while, I put my faith in my sister and let her work things through with Henrietta before I could speak to the Goth myself. It gave Henrietta the time to scrounge up the right materials, and me the time to work out other complications.

With information coming to us in bits and pieces, and in such strange ways, it became quickly and easily understood that our primary League goal, up until the event at the Goths' coffee house, was simply to gather as much information as possible. This was turning more and more into a kind of covert, spy operation, since the GSM had not attacked since the night we'd turned so many over to the cops. Which bothered me. As much as I wanted to go out and punch something, I had to stay restrained.

If there was one person I _could_ go out and punch now, however, it was Sargeant Yates.

Mosquito kept an eye on him, as I'd instructed, tapping police scanners to make sure the Sargeant wasn't having any meet-ups with Gingers without our knowing that GSM members were out and about, and ultimately keeping his ears open for other projects the cops might have been turning to.

It hit us both around the same time, though, that we should check on the Infra-Reds we had previously turned in, particularly if Yates himself was at risk of getting 'recruited' by the GSM. Since I definitely wanted to get in a few words with the head of the Park County police department, I accompanied Mosquito to the station prior to an already planned meeting with Henrietta over dealings with the Shadow.

Joining us, more or less as a trial run to see if he truly did want to adopt an alter ego, was Craig.

Endgame.

"I like the name," I told him as the three of us set out from the base to Park County station.

"Not too much?" he wondered. I glanced down to take a look at those boots he'd started wearing. Maybe Craig had been back and forth about his full League involvement for a while, but the fact that he'd made those was promising. The guy had a lot of potential. A _lot._

"Hey, I like it, it seems accurate, and it'd be great if you finally had a name that wouldn't give you away," I said.

"Plus, it's a nice big 'fuck you' to Damien, don'tcha think?" Mosquito added positively. "If he's gonna try to warp whatever it is he's doing into one big tease of a Carnival game…"

"Don't make me hate you," the newly-named hero interrupted.

"Kinda true, though," I pointed out. "It'll give Damien and those guys a good run for their money."

"Speaking of Damien to get the subject off of me," Endgame said, all but shrugging to change the subject, "we are sure he's the one leading the Ginger army?"

"It's a fair guess," said Mosquito. "Kite noted that the sender was _Thorn,_ and I'm putting stock into that."

"You really think Tenorman sold his soul?"

"Wouldn't rule it out," I sighed.

"For what?"

"That's what we're doing here."

"I thought we were here because the cop's being an idiot."

"We're here for that, too."

The way I generally liked to pay visits to the Park County police department was the same way I crept in on the Goths, and the same way I'd promised my sister protection when we were children. There was a top-floor window, where most of the offices were located, that was accessible by way of a fire escape. I'm not sure if the secretaries and security guards on the first floor ever even knew I dropped by whenever I did, though the team and I had made other frequent, officer-accompanied visits to the jail as well.

Tonight, we started on the second floor.

The first one to spot us was Murphy, Yates's long-time partner on the force and still one of the more level-headed agents Park County had on any of its units. The man, his desk already situated to face the window, lifted his head and scratched at the sides of his slate-grey hair, then backed up in his rolling seat once Mosquito and Endgame entered behind me.

"Um… g-good evening," Murphy said. "Mysterion, I had no idea you were on patrol tonight. I usually see you on Wednesdays."

"Courtesy call," I said, rolling back my shoulders and approaching his desk. "Where's Yates?"

"Bathroom. He'll be out soon. What's going on?"

"What's going on," Mosquito answered for me, arms folded with one hand stroking the end of one of his stun guns, just enough to warn the cops that we were there on a mission, and that we _really_ needed to see it through, "is that your sargeant is ignoring warning signs and not keeping in touch with us while we track down the Ginger Separatist Movement."

I heard a flush and the opening and closing of a door down the hall, and while Murphy sat still pondering our arrival, Sargeant Yates breezed through a number of officers who were pretending not to react to the fact that a few Shadow League members had dropped in. "Sargeant," I barked in his direction.

"Okay, what's going on?" the sargeant asked, too loudly, his tone almost sing-songish. He'd slip into that tone often, I noticed, whenever he felt that he was being either had or outsmarted… or when he just didn't want to take any of what he considered to be bullshit. I _did not like_ being spoken to that way. Not at all.

"Funny you should ask," I said, not moving. I let that idiot come to me. "I was about to ask the same of you."

"What are you talking about?" Yates asked in the same tone as before. He caught sight of Mosquito and nodded in his direction. "And how come my wife says she thought she saw you staking out on the roof of our garage the other night?" Mosquito gave no reply, so Yates moved his gaze to Endgame. "And who even are you?"

"Endgame," our companion answered. Craig had never disguised his voice before while on missions, finding no need to, since he still considered himself just… _Craig._ But something was making him want to go all-out. I knew he'd taken a trip to Peru fairly recently, but I could never have called that it would have affected him in such a profound way. He spoke his name by giving his voice the same kind of timbre that some of us—Stan, Kyle, Token and myself—used while masked: he effected a lower growl which, given the rather nasal, monotonous quality of his real speaking voice, was almost terrifying, even to me.

"Why're you called Endgame?"

"You don't want to find out." Note to self to remind Craig how glad I was that he was on our side in everything.

Yates shrugged it off. "Doesn't matter how many of you guys show up," he said, directly to me again. "If this is a threat, I could arrest you."

"Sir, that's absolutely ridiculous," said Murphy, rising. "With all due respect, sir, this is the _Shadow League._ They're assets to this city."

"Well, if they've turned to stalking cops, they're gonna be nothin' else but pains in my ass," said the red-haired sargeant. "I thought the League was above chasing down Carnivals that don't exist."

"You know, that's exactly what we're here about," I said, getting right into Yates's face to drive my point home. He smelled like sour coffee and nicotine gum, which was enough to make my stomach churn and my gag reflex almost act up. I held it back, though, and continued, "I gave you explicit instructions not to open the letter you received the night of the attack. Why'd you do it?"

"Evidence, kid," said Yates, pushing past me toward his desk. "That's what real cops do."

"Except it appears you've stopped," Mosquito pointed out. "You opened the letter but filed the GSM as a cold case."

"Sir?" Murphy tried again, though his attempt was futile.

"Didn't answer it, did you?" asked Endgame, without moving even his head to speak to the sargeant.

"No, and seriously, get that guy out of here," Yates said, raising his voice, "he's freaking me out."

I was furious. Yates was acting stranger than he ever had. Sure, I'd often thought that Murphy should have been the one calling the shots at Park County, but I had never really been in a position to say so. Yates got his way and that was that. Something must have forced him to open that letter.

"Where's the letter?" I demanded.

"At my house."

"Nice place for evidence," said Mosquito.

"So I take my work home."

"And how far's it gonna go?" I nearly shouted, finally advancing on Sargeant Yates.

Yates rolled his eyes. "For Christ's sake," he muttered. "It was a recruitment letter to join that weird little Movement, as you call it. But they're all flash and no bang. I think every single one of 'em is sitting down in the jail right now. They were amateurs who hung up some crazy posters and sent some chainmail."

"Amateurs don't have helicopters!" I hollered. Not my best defense, but I had to blow off steam somehow.

"Whatever. These guys are nothing," Yates said, passing it off. "Just a group that wants attention. They're all dead leads."

"You know what? Yeah, these guys _do_ want attention, I'll give you that," I growled at him. "But what's going to happen once they start making demands, Sargeant? Once things get out of hand?"

"Out of hand? It's vandalism, Mysterion, nothin' more than that. This so-called 'Ginger Rebellion' is just a waste of our time."

All right. That set me over.

I grabbed the cop by the collar and pushed him up against the wall. "Waste of _time?"_ I repeated. "Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

"Hey, let go of me," Yates demanded. "What's this all about?"

"Mysterion," Mosquito said, clipping the word as a warning. Realizing that I was acting a little out of line, I stood down, releasing the officer. "Listen, Yates, we're not impressed. Yes," he admitted, "I've been following you, but only because we feel we have reason not to trust you."

"On a bunk case?"

"Call it what you want, but there's more to those posters than petty vandalism. They are an organized, anti-establishment Movement, and they are doing the same thing many movements have done before: they're waiting to strike. We can't be unprepared." Mosquito glared daggers at the sargeant, and added, "When the Shadow League gives you a warning, we have good reason to be doing so."

The GSM was certainly not a waste of time, as Yates had professed, but our discussing it with him felt like it. The man could not be convinced. I did see Murphy pass us an almost pitying glance as I called my two companions back out the window with me. As much as I'd kind of wanted to get into a downright fistfight over the subject of the letter with Yates, he was giving me nothing.

He seemed convinced that the Movement and the Carnival both were below our concern. A cold case only a few weeks old. Bullshit. He was considering the letter, I knew it. We just had to prove it. Either that or prove to him that the Movement really did know what they were doing. In order to present that to the cops, though, we needed more than just a couple dozen men and women sitting in jail.

When the three of us entered the station again through the metal front doors, we were greeted not by a receptionist but by a panting Agent Murphy, who must have booked it down the stairs in order to catch up with us. He was too winded to speak, but beckoned for us to follow him as he unclipped a ring of keys from around his belt, indicating that he would be glad to bring us downstairs.

Even though we had not yet mentioned that we'd had every intention of heading down there. "You a mind-reader now, Murphy?" I asked as he brought us to the staircase that led down to the row of cells below the station.

"No," he said, his breathing settled. "I was all set to run out after you guys anyway. I'm glad you came back. I don't know what the hell is wrong with the sargeant, but I apologize. Ever since he opened up that letter and brought it home, he's been avoiding a lot of work, even though he's here at his computer all the time."

"Doesn't sound too promising," Mosquito noted.

Murphy shook his head. "Plus, I feel like I'm the only one other than the guards who's been down here checking on these guys. They're all still here, but—"

"All still here?" I said. "No, one broke out. Two of our members caught her, and we took her goggles in as evidence ourselves."

Murphy's eyes went wide. "That's not possible," he said. "I just did a head count yesterday. Unless that happened late last night or this morning…"

"Move," I instructed, picking up my pace. The four of us quickened our gait down the long, narrow path that stretched out through the mostly unoccupied cells until Murphy showed us to two large cells, inside of which were the now unmasked group of Ginger Seperatists.

They sat in disturbingly neat, organized rows, all sticking to the uniform of sitting cross-legged, heads slightly bowed. My ass they weren't organized, Yates.

"If the sargeant ever came down here, I'm sure his opinion would change," said Murphy, shuddering as he looked over every similarly-shaded head. "I can't get any of these guys to talk, and we've confiscated their gear. They don't move, and as far as I've ever seen, they don't eat."

"Guys," said Endgame, "you seeing this?"

"What?" I wondered, stepping back so that he and I had the same view.

In the sea of Gingers, I was, once Endgame pointed her out to me, able to pick out Sally Turner. "What's she—what are you doing here?" I shouted in at her.

"Our comrades have photographs of her on the street," Mosquito explained to Agent Murphy, who cringed at the information. "Our sources don't cite her as a twin."

"Couple others of these guys look like twins, too," Endgame pointed out.

Not a one of the Infra-Reds spoke or reacted to our presence. They simply seemed to be meditating. Or waiting. And, just as Endgame had picked up on, quite a few of them looked similar. The face of one man was identical to that of another in the other cell; two other 'twins' sat diagonally from each other.

And every single one of them, I realized, had the same pattern of freckles.

Below each eye, and at the center of the forehead, the freckles formed circular patterns, and did not differ from face to face.

"Oh, shit," Mosquito buzzed out.

"That's comforting," said Murphy.

"My apologies, but we hadn't seen more than one unmasked before."

"These guys aren't just recruits," I realized. "They're carbon copies."

"We've been able to do face-matches for a few of them… before Yates abandoned the project," Murphy told us. "I personally tried to contact a few of them, but they couldn't be reached."

"We'll get on it," Mosquito assured him. "Keep us posted on Yates's behavior."

Murphy nodded. "I hate to be spying on him," he said. "I've known him forever, and not even his wife seems to be calling in with concern, but me and the guys've been a little skeptical."

"Keep your guard up," I instructed the Agent, "and your eyes on the shadows. We'll be around."

Mosquito managed to take a few pictures with a camera he had hidden on a detatchable scope for the stun-sniper he'd sometimes strap to his back nowadays, and then the three of us were off again. I sent a mass text to the others saying that Mosquito would be filing a new report about the GSM, and another text just to Butters, in hopes that Agent Harmony might be able to do some extra snooping on Sally Turner. Since those two were friends, maybe she'd have the best chance of finding out what happened to the real one.

Because I was now convinced that Damien was creating a counterfeit army as easily as some seedy men could create counterfeit money. With the letters going out to the actual citizens of South Park, though, and the broadcasts supposedly reaching every radio in every home, car and mobile device, he was reaching society. And society was, either knowingly or unknowingly (I wasn't sure which was worse), giving him what he wanted.

An army.

A Carnival.

"Where are the originals?" Mosquito asked in a panic as the three of us kept to the back roads away from the station.

"Gonna guess it's at the place those 'dead lead' posters were advertising," said Endgame.

"Good point," I nodded. "The Carnival doesn't have a location anyone knows about, but if these people don't actually exist…"

"Suppose they _do,_ though," Mosquito pointed out. "What if the originals are hidden into the army along with the copies? And I mean, how's he even _doing_ that?"

"He's the son of the devil, I'm sure he's got a way," I said. "Listen, guys, I'll catch up with you later. Keep alert, and call in Angel, or another team or two if you need backup, but I've gotta have a word with Henrietta."

"Good call. But hey," said Mosquito, grabbing my arm before I could divert, "be careful, all right? How's that Shadow treating you?"

I sighed. "Leaving me alone, for the most part," I told him, "but I still don't feel so great."

"Can't imagine you would. Good luck, okay?"

"Same to you. If there's any activity—"

"We'll let you know."

With that, we parted ways, and I slipped off when the road parted in order to make my way to the loft above the Tenth Circle. The facts that we did have tugged at my mind. Damien had us playing detective. Which was fine, but we could not afford to miss a single hint, a single clue. Nor could we discount anything as being a possible connection.

Why not just have an army from Hell? He could do that, right? When we were kids, I'd seen him rip the ground right open with little more than a thought. He could throw fire and summon—

Shadows.

I picked up my pace to a sprint and made it to my destination in record time. Heart racing like mad, I passed by the fire escape that would have brought me to the living room and took a running jump up to a drainpipe on the wall facing the opposite cross street instead. One hand over the other, I managed to make my way noiselessly up the drain pipe to a window only slightly ajar, but with—oh so conveniently—no screen.

Carefully, I nudged open the window, slipped inside, and fell into a kneeling position on the hardwood floor of Henrietta's bedroom, my shadow casting long in front of me.

"Well, now," said Henrietta, feigning astonishment, "this is a surprise."

If the rest of the Goths' apartment was a library, Henrietta's personal room was the rare archives. The four walls in her fairly well-sized bedroom were painted smoke grey… or perhaps they were a different color and what I was seeing _was_ the direct result of her smoking habit. (In which case, ew, lady, lay off a little.) Not much of the walls could be seen, however, behind Henrietta's four-poster bed, shrouded in a black lace canopy, behind the bookshelves on either side of the bed and the far wall, and behind a large wardrobe that she kept locked at all times. As the room also had a closet for her various black dresses, any other visitor would surely wonder what the significance of the wardrobe was.

I hadn't had to guess twice, even at the beginning.

"Henrietta," I greeted her, standing.

She had been seated at the foot of that Victorian bed of hers, a book in her hand, but stood to address me. "Figured I'd see you sooner or later," she said. She set her book down, then looked me over from toe to head. "You gonna bring back that portfolio I lent you?"

"Borrowed it out to Toolshed," I told her. "You'll get it back."

"Good. I need to update it."

"You'll get it." I did wonder about the updates. More sins, no doubt. The ones I'd already seen were disturbing enough; anything else from Wilcox's mind was sure to add to the plethora of ill feelings the other paintings already invoked. "How's the gallery coming?"

"You gonna be at the opening?" the Goth baited me, pre-empting the continuation of my visit by moving silently to the desk next to the wardrobe, both of them of dark cherry wood. Henrietta had an old secretary desk, with a sloped surface for writing and a rolling door to compartment shelves above the surface. She now rolled up the door and reached into a small compartment on her right to withdraw a skeleton key of plated metal.

"Can you give me any more information about it now?" I wondered.

"Only that you're gonna want eyes outside and in," said Henrietta. She fitted the skeleton key to the lock on her wardrobe.

Her hand shook. Her voice hid nerves.

"Why?" I asked, trying not to make it a demand. "Henrietta, is someone silencing you? It's not like you to keep things from me."

"Curating an event is stressful," she said firmly, clicking open the wardrobe. "That's all." Before she could open up the doors, however, she drew in the practiced breath of someone accustomed to filling her lungs with the sensation of a clove cigarette. "That and maybe there are some things about the event even I'm not sure are… look, just make sure you're there. Bring friends."

"We'll be there," I assured her.

She simply nodded, then drew back the two large, rectangular doors of her wardrobe. It was a tiny museum in there. On the insides of the doors, Henrietta had put up maps of Arkham, Dunwich, and Ipswitch, Massachusetts: sites of early 20th-century sightings of some of the Great Old Ones, and home to most of the artifacts we had recovered. The library at Miskatonic University, in Arkham, had at one time housed at least one copy of the _Necronomicon._

Inside the wardrobe, Henrietta had set up shelves and safes. I shuddered at the mere thought of knowing what was inside the safes. Books and scrolls, dusty with age, were stacked on some of the shelves, while others housed art and artifacts shrouded in velvet cloths and bags. In the center, Henrietta had set up something of a shrine. Surrounding a matted black safe, in which she held the final retrieved copy of the _Necronomicon,_ were unlit candles, the bas-relief of Cthulhu that Wilcox's ancestor had sculpted, and a large tome, its spine decrepid and strung together with twine.

Above the shrine, painted in her own web-like handwriting, were the words, _Strange things lie yet beyond the shadows._

Beneath that, she had painted out a block of words, encased in quotation marks:

"_The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head… Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl."_

"Been thinking something new might come up?" I guessed.

"I never ruled it out," said the Goth. She faced me again, to ask, "Been talking to your sister, though. Someone's giving you guys a rough ride. What's the current problem, again?"

"Henrietta," I said gravely, "we've got Hell at our heels."

She smirked. "You sure like pissing off the right people."

"I'm convinced darkness just likes seeking us out," I corrected her.

"Hell, huh?" Henrietta said, scouring the contents of her wardrobe shelves. "What makes you say that?"

"For starters, let me show you this."

That got Henrietta's attention, and when we met in the middle of her floor, I withdrew from my utility belt the ripped open envelope that had sent Damien's 'gift' to me. I'd stashed it on my person nearly every night, lately, just in case I'd get the chance to discuss it. "Been listening to the radio at all, lately?" I wondered.

"I don't listen to the radio."

"Figured." I handed Henrietta the envelope.

"Nice wax work," she said, upon first studying the broken seal. "Who's _D,_ and who's _T?"_

"Same guy," I told her. "Damien Thorn. Ever hear of him?"

"No, but your friend told me to listen for the name." Henrietta pulled out her lighter from a pocket I never would have known was in her layered black dress otherwise, and ignited the flame. My heart skipped a beat as she held the lighter up to study the envelope more closely.

"Well, it's a name worth knowing," I said, feeling my pulse start to rush with nerves again. "He came to Earth a long time ago, and something's brought him back."

"From?"

"Hell," I stressed, figuring she could have put that together. Unless she just wanted to hear me say it. "He's the son of the devil. Do you know _anything_ about Hell, Henrietta? I know you guys don't practice Satanism or anything, but any information you might have would be helpful. And I mean anything. Powers the beings of Hell might have. Past connections between Hell and Earth."

"How about Hell and R'lyeh?" asked Henrietta, handing the envelope back to me. "Little white bird told me you've been having some Shadow problems lately."

At least Henrietta had been listening to Angel. That was a good sign.

To prove the point, I moved my right arm out to the side. I still wanted to keep myself rather distanced from this Shadow, and had not made strides to try to control it, as I had the one of my curse. Dammit… Damien had summoned sentient shadows, straight up from Hell. He'd just concocted a special one for me. Fucker.

The shadows in Henrietta's room became instantly aware of my own Shadow's presence. The Goth looked unimpressed: a) because she never did, and b) because she knew what was coming. I didn't care. I just wanted an answer, or something that might lead me to one.

"Hmm." Henrietta went back to her wardrobe and pulled the strung-together volume from the center shrine. "That's how she described it, yeah."

"Is it from Hell?" I asked her. "Can we test it or something?"

"I don't have anything that can test it, but we might be able to make some judgment calls," said the Goth.

"With that book?" I guessed. "What is it, anything like the _Necronomicon?"_

"This book is from a place called Leng," Henrietta said. "Snatched this outta Miskatonic myself before it shut down."

"I'm listening," I prompted her eagerly.

My Goth liaison nearly smirked, high and haughty, and took a pause, holding me in suspense. "Here's the thing," she eventually said. "Even though it was another dimension, R'lyeh wasn't an exception from the Divine Rule of Three."

"What do you mean?" I wondered. "This isn't gonna be some kind of math lesson, is it?"

Henrietta hefted open her thick old book to an illustration of an illuminated mandala. On yellowing paper was a circle painted in black ink, enhanced with touches of red and gold. Within the circle were several triangles, all connecting to different dots surrounding the diameter. Behind the mandala itself were images of constellations I did not recognize, and hieroglyphics that reminded me immediately of the language that had been carved into the broken-down crypts of R'lyeh.

"Believe me," Henrietta said almost scornfully, "geometry's got nothing to do with anything the Old Ones, Deep Ones, or Outer Gods touch."

"Great," I muttered. "There are more."

I knew this, of course, I just hadn't wanted to be ready for more. Especially now that it seemed like Damien was interested in messing shit up. I could take one at a time, but Damien _and_ whatever else was out there past wherever Yog-Sothoth had set up his new Gate? I didn't think so. I was done with that shit. And what was with the Gingers? Clever cover, Damien, but I didn't exactly get it.

"You guys did a number on a lot of them. Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep are down, and your teammates got a bunch of others, like Ghanatothoa, the Hydra… I've got the list somewhere." I think Henrietta only ever shrugged about twice a year. This was one of those instances. It was kind of weird seeing her shrug, weirder than seeing her smile, honestly. Possibly because I'd always perceived Henrietta as a woman who did not very easily give up, or feel defeat.

I sighed. "Look, I know Yog-Sothoth is probably still out there somewhere. Of course there's more. I was just kinda hoping they'd, y'know, quit it for a few hundred more years. What I'm pissed about is this new fucking Shadow," I admitted. "Did I just get fucked over again or didn't I?"

Henrietta gave me a _back off, bad dog_ kind of glare. She pointed at one of the triangles, and pointed her perfectly-polished index finger's nail at one of the lines. "Divine Rule of Three," she said. "The one everyone knows is pretty obvious. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory. Doesn't matter where you're from on this planet, that's kinda consistent."

"So even the guy who wrote the _Necronomicon_ got that," I assumed.

"I'd say so, yeah," Henrietta agreed. "Plus, Earth's in a couple of Circles of Three. There's Earth, Sun, Moon for one," she said, pointing to another line, "and then we've got Earth, R'lyeh…"

"And the Void?" I guessed.

"Yup."

"Shit."

Henrietta did grin at me this time. "And _that,_ Mysterion, is why I've been keeping these artifacts around. You're welcome."

"You're becoming quite the curator," I managed to compliment her through the rage that was starting to build up with the realization that we weren't entirely finished with the rest of Cthulhu's friends. "What even is this book?"

"This text is a professor's translation of the _Dhol Chants,"_ Henrietta explained. "Chants and prayers of a people who lived in a place that transcends reality."

"That Leng place?" I guessed.

"You got it, cape boy." Henrietta gave herself a moment to think things over, then continued, "I'm gonna take a guess here and say that some places that had already kind of disappeared from Earth and into the Spaces Between might still be around."

"But R'lyeh's _gone,"_ I insisted.

"Keep your panties over your pants and listen, jerk," Henrietta snapped. Her skirt's shadow billowed into mine like a net of spider webs as she crossed the floor to the bookshelf nearest to my right. She tapped her little Cthulhu statuette, causing me to cringe, and said, "This guy was the Priest that presided over the Old Ones sleeping in R'lyeh. R'lyeh was the center of a Circle of Three, tied to Earth and the Void."

"So where on this stupid fucking map are the Spaces Between?" I asked impatiently, smacking my left hand down on the mandala that still stared tauntingly up at me.

"First off, it's not a map, it's a _chart,"_ Henrietta insisted, "and secondly, here's the bitch of it. Check out the center of it."

Lines crossed and crossed and crossed inside the circle, but the center sat untouched, creating a nonagon. The nine sides were so small and so precise, however, that at first glance, it merely looked like another circle. I fixed my eyes to the spot to make out each side and each corner, however, and needed only stare for a moment before the lines around the center began to blur in my vision.

The converging lines began to appear to my fixed point as a spiral. Precise links became twisted lines of black nothingness, spirals and spirals until at last it was all black. All shadow.

I gasped and snapped the book closed, having to blink several times before I could readjust to the dim, hazy light of Henrietta's room.

The Spaces Between were the center of the chart. And every space not confined to a line. Even then, the lines distorted to become a part of them. They could not die with R'lyeh, because they abided by their own laws. No point connected to them, for they could not be found.

"I get it," I said, nearly forgetting to disguise my voice. I technically never needed to, around Henrietta, but it was the principle of the thing. "They're everywhere. The Spaces Between—"

_"Don't_ play by the rules."

"…Does Hell?" I asked warily.

"I already told you it does. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory," Henrietta repeated. "Hell's like the grand high master of keeping the Circles of Three in a balance. Hell itself is divided into circles, or so the legend goes."

"Good to know," I muttered. "But this," I said, tapping the empty center of the mandala again, "is gonna bug the fuck outta me. So this Leng place. It isn't real?"

"It is but isn't," said Henrietta. "I'd guess," she added, sliding another book off of the shelf, "it's kind of in Dreamland territory now."

_"Dreamland,"_ I repeated. "Okay, hold up."

Henrietta thrust the new book into my hand. It still had a call number on its spine from the University Library in Arkham, and was, as far as the cover read, a collection of dream journals submitted by several contributors. I flipped to the table of contents to find that the contributors included students, townsfolk, professors, and some entries from anonymous sources spread around the world. The copyright on the collection was 1950, though the book appeared to have been bound together at least three or four decades earlier.

"Dream journals," said Henrietta, as if I hadn't just read the cover. "Even people who didn't go fully mad like that Wilcox guy had visions of the Dreamlands. R'lyeh wasn't the only city that fell from the stars, Mysterion. There's evidence that these places exist," such as those star charts and chantings, sure, but…

"Henrietta, what _are_ the Dreamlands?" I had to know.

"I need a cigarette."

Henrietta turned away from me to retrieve her quellazaire from her desk. From one of the desk compartments, she pulled out a pack of Blacks, fitted one to the handle, and lit up. "There's an artifact I still need," said the Goth, once her craving was satiated. "A lamp."

"You gonna go _Arabian Nights_ on me, now, what the hell?" I wondered.

"Settle down, boy scout, it belonged to Alhazred."

My chest tightened. Abdul Alhazred was a madman, and the one who had penned the original _Necronomicon._ My shadow curled around me at the mention of his name.

"I can only read dream journals so much," the Goth continued. "I want that lamp because one of those entries mentions it." She nodded to the collection I now held. "Apparently, it can _show_ you the Dreamlands, when it reacts to light, but it doesn't react to shadows. I'm sure if it responded to any, though, _the_ Shadow would be an exception."

"So if we find the lamp," I deduced, "we've got a surefire way to see if this thing Damien sent me has any relation to R'lyeh, still?"

"I'd suppose, yeah." Henrietta took another long drag off of her cigarette. Smoke billowed from between her teeth and lips as she continued to speak. "I'd put a lot of stock into the Circles of Three if I were you. To be honest, I always kind of thought Satan was a total pussy compared to things like Cthulhu." Oh, I'd heard her and her friends tell me that many times, and I more or less believed them. "That letter you showed me though… the man sending those knows his shit. And by that I mean he must know plenty about you."

I took the envelope out again, and studied the seal and Damien's writing. Karen had hypothesized that Hell kept files on every living soul, and that I'd have a fairly long file indeed. It had been four years since the last time I died, thus leaving that supposed file untouched.

The only other things I could think of for those files to have on record would be accounts of sins. Isn't that how Heaven and Hell worked for the rest of the world? Tally up the sins and see where it gets you. It once had been that Heaven had allowed only Mormons to cross the golden gate, but that shining, blissful afterlife had started making exceptions, starting around the time when I was nine… right around the time when I started realizing I could and wanted to be a superhero.

Hell had waged war on Heaven plenty of times before, but I had the feeling this was not the present case. This had only to do with us, and with the work we had done involving R'lyeh.

"Meaning he knows about these pocket-dimensions," I began to piece together aloud. "But if you can't reach them, and if they don't really exist…"

"What I think," Henrietta cut in, "is if this Damien guy is who you're saying he is, he's just the guy to stick his finger in the pot and stir shit up a little."

I trusted every word she said. None of us in the League had put much stock into suggestions of any kind of Apocalypse, which seemed right. Hell wasn't rising so much as it was… moving in. Damien was heading some kind of charge, and either Earth by way of the Dreamlands or the Dreamlands by way of Earth—read: South Park—was his route. But I agreed with Henrietta on the idea that the devil's son was here to stir things up. It was true: he just could not stand that he was late to the party.

"Anything else you've seen devil boy do?" Henrietta wondered.

"Other than summon and duplicate shadows, even cursed ones… I think he can duplicate _people,"_ I told her. I made a note to get right on talking to Kyle about that, as well. In a panic, I had asked him if he could somehow summon up some kind of psychic radar to lock onto people the way I'd seen him lock onto inanimate objects. He seemed to have taken my words into consideration (God, Kyle always obsesses over nitpicky details, but I say that as a compliment).

"Weirder things have happened," said Henrietta. The gavel on the case.

"No kidding," I said. "You really think he could… I don't know, distort the Spaces Between somehow?"

"Seems right up a devil's alley. I don't say this to many people, Mysterion, but you and your team are about the only ones who can not only find out, but do something about it, if Satan's son is up here doing some dirty work in the Dreamlands."

"Jeez," I muttered. "I really thought we'd kinda closed it when the Gate collapsed."

"Listen," said Henrietta, her shifting gaze an indication of her own stacking thoughts. "It's one thing to erase thoughts of the Old Ones from most of mankind. But I'm pretty sure you've known for a while that you and your friends aren't exactly in any 'most of' category."

"All of us, huh?" I said, glancing again at the chart.

"Look at your team. You've got a psychic. You've got Craig."

"Craig?"

"Yeah." Shoulda figured. One isn't painted on a prophetic Incan wall for nothing. Henrietta did not elaborate further on Craig, so I decided not to pry. I considered Craig a pretty good friend, though Clyde was still closer to him than I'd ever been, in the bros-and-practically-brothers category of friendships, but Craig had still not mentioned much around his breakup with Henrietta. I'd only even figured that they weren't together when, at school, Craig mentioned something about a date with a girl slightly older than he was who worked at a bar near our school. Oh, well. Whatever it was, Craig and Henrietta both seemed pretty fine with it. I'd just kind of hoped for more for them; to each their own, though. "Plus," Henrietta went on, "you've got Chaos."

I sighed. "He's not Chaos anymore," I told her. Reiterated, really. No matter how many times I said it, though, all Henrietta would say was:

"Sure." And she did not sound convinced. "Anyway. You've got all that, plus plenty of Circles of Three going on right around you."

"How so?"

I was trying the Goth's patience and I knew it, but as long as she was talking, I'd stay there till she kicked me out. When Henrietta got talkative, I had to make the most of it. "You," she said bluntly. "Your sister. And—"

Oh, wait, did I say I liked it when Henrietta had a lot to say? Maybe. Just not about this. "Oh, don't say it," I begged.

Henrietta passively lit another cigarette. "Like it or not, Cult dealings don't always die. You, your sister, and that fatass Coon bastard you've got on your team are all kinda, you know… marked. You're linked, and you will be till that Damien guy moves in."

Glancing back at the vast shadow I was casting over the wall, I steeled myself, and filled my head with thoughts of my resources.

I should have seen something like this coming. Not necessarily how much residue we still had to clean up after R'lyeh, but things involving that assdick Cartman. I went, in my life, between truly hating the bastard and just plain tolerating him. I tried to be friends; we kind of were. But we could be friends and still be at mortal odds. I'd certainly never felt comfortable with any of our similarities, particularly our shared history with the Cult.

Now that Damien was on the scene and Hell was lurking, though—dammit. This really was getting more personal than I'd thought. Damien wanted to stir shit up, huh? How far would he go?

And fucking _why?_ He couldn't use his half-brother (ew, still, by the way) to raise Cthulhu anymore. Besides, I'd've figured that Damien was above Cthulhu somehow.

Or maybe R'lyeh was something even Hell could never touch.

Stan and Kyle both had brought up the idea that we were being tested. The longer I stayed in conversation with Henrietta that evening, the more I became convinced of that fact. Whether it was Damien or one of the Elder Gods pulling the real strings, I didn't care. By getting rid of R'lyeh, we'd probably pissed somebody off. And maybe opened up an opportunity to another.

The question still tugged at my head, though: where did Tenorman figure in? And why had we seen hide nor hair of that bastard? He'd professed a desire to 'build the new Between' on the walls of the South Park Asylum, and I knew both from Stan and even from Bebe's accounts of having been in the Asylum for a while that dreams might not be something to discount here.

Henrietta had mentioned Dreamlands.

If anyone could reach those places and make anything of them…

That man was an artist. His name was Wilcox, and he knew exactly how these circles were coming together. Hell and the Void. Earth and… well, everyone and everything we managed to piss off and fuck up.

But we were the Shadow League. We'd survived some pretty crazy shit, and I was confident that my team could see this through, as well. So maybe we had to seek out places that didn't technically exist. Something told me that a part of this 'test' was going to lead us in the right direction to do something meaningful.

Before Damien could stir the Spaces around beyond repair.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Ahhh, had to bring in some Lovecraft before we could go full-on into Dante's works… which is coming up very soon. :3 (I'd wanted this to be a multi-narrator originally, but got so caught up in Kenny, haha…) Referenced in this chapter are various assorted things from Lovecraft's 'Dream Cycle,' as well as _The Lamp of Alhazred,_ and _The Festival_ (from which I pulled Alhazred's blocked quote; those are Lovecraft's words, cut down a bit from the original). I'm excited to start weaving the two sources of inspiration for this story together (Lovecraft's Dream Cycle and Dante's Inferno). The theory of the Circles of Three, while there are several spiritual references to trinities and the like, are our own addition. I had fun with this one, finally getting to draw in more Lovecraft material to weave into Mysterion's story~

Thank you so much for reading! (And hi and many thanks to new followers!) We hope you're enjoying the story and we'd love to hear what you think so far~ ^^ See you next **Wednesday, August 1****st****! **:3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	7. Ep 7: Mission Illogical

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _****_|_|_|**

_Butters_

Living with Eric Cartman was, to put it as nicely as possible, a challenge.

But that was how any interaction was with him generally, challenging, so, of course, my offering to let him sleep over in my basement for a few nights was no exception.

He'd come out of the meeting room looking so lost on the day we had all found out about his connection to the current threat we found ourselves up against. And, honestly, I was still having a hard time believing it; Eric had another half-brother who happened to be the son of the devil? It was just too weird. But it was obviously hitting him really hard as well. And damn it all if I didn't feel bad for him. So, I offered an olive branch of sorts, an invitation for a place to stay. He told me he didn't want to go home and face his mother so soon after learning the news. Kenny had given him permission to stay at the base, but I could tell Eric wasn't too keen on that idea either, probably because Kenny had just spent the better part of the evening yelling at him and giving him a hard time for running away like that without staying in communication with the group. So, I stepped in as a safer alternative. One where he wouldn't be in danger of getting caught in more shouting-fests.

Well, not that Eric and I hadn't been known to get into high-volume arguments in our past. But I hoped that it wouldn't be that awkward between us now. We had both more or less agreed that we at least needed to remain decent teammates. Hopefully, that peace treaty of ours could extend a bit beyond League bounds.

I'd checked with Wendy, of course, before I gave Eric the final okay to come over; it was technically still her house and all. I admit it was a little odd, me still referring to my residence as 'Wendy's house' even though I had been considering the place home for the past four years, but it didn't seem right otherwise. Her parents and I had had more than one pseudo-argument over my offering of rent money, so I just helped out around the house a lot, bought some groceries every once in a while, and kept calling the place in conversation with other people what it was, really – my friend's house where I also happened to live. It worked itself out. I just hoped that my offer wouldn't seem too forward of me. Wendy seemed reluctantly accepting of the idea when I'd phoned her from the base, and still after we drove there in Eric's car (we hadn't had to worry about a vehicle of mine since I didn't have it out that day) when I met her at the top of the stairs for a private word. The only thing she warned me against was making sure Eric wasn't going to "eat all the food in the fridge or something." I promised, thanked her again for agreeing to allow him to stay over, and returned to where I'd left Eric in the living room.

Before I could show Eric to the basement, however, he asked if he could use the bathroom, so I waited while he used the guest one in the hall between the dining room and kitchen.

He'd been gone about a minute when I heard a cell phone ring. My hand instinctively went to my pants pocket, but it wasn't my ringtone. I looked over at the side table next to the couch, and noticed Eric's phone lying there next to his car keys, vibrating as well as ringing. I knew it was his as it was the latest model on the market, and he always got the upgrades as soon as his service company would let him. I picked it up and checked the screen. It read "Mom." I saw in the top-right corner that there was a numeral ten next to the symbol for voice messages. His mother must have been calling him all evening trying to reach him.

In a wave of sympathy for the woman, I made a split-second decision and pressed answer on the touch-screen. "Hi, Mrs. Cartman. This is Butters."

"Oh, Butters," I heard Liane Cartman's high, breathy voice respond on the other end of the line. Obviously she hadn't expect me to speak. "Is my little Eric there? Is he all right? Can I speak to him?"

"He's fine, Mrs. Cartman," I assured her, "but he's in the bathroom right now. We're at Wendy's house and, um, Eric was planning on spending the night over here."

"Oh, I see." She sounded sad, but relieved to at least hear of his whereabouts. "I've been trying to reach him. He left here so fast and I didn't get a chance to-" she stopped herself, probably because she didn't know how much I was aware of their family situation. "Well, I'm glad he's with you, dear. You were always so good to him. I was sorry when you two stopped being friends." That was nice to hear. I hadn't had any reason to talk to Liane since Eric and I had broken up, but she had always been really nice to me. Making me cookies and letting me stay the night a bunch of times. Even though I knew what the entire League did now, I still had nothing against the woman. "Will you at least tell him that I'm sorry, and try to send him home as soon as you can?"

"Yeah, of course," I assured her.

"Thank you." And with that, she hung up.

I had just brought the phone down from my ear when I heard the door of the hall bathroom open and Eric came out. "What are you doing with my phone?"

"Oh, uh," I began, and then felt incredibly guilty that I'd gone ahead and answered his phone while he was out of the room and talked to the mother that he was currently furious at. I didn't want to start an argument with him. Mentally assuring myself that I would try to keep my promise to Liane to send him home soon, I scooped up his keys off the side table and held them both out to him, saying, "I just noticed you left your stuff in here and didn't want you to forget it."

Eric gave me a look but took a few steps forward to retrieve his belongings from my hands. "Okay, thanks then." I then hurried past him, a little clumsily, and led him through the door under the stairs and down another set to the basement where I helped him set up the pull-out sofa. He said as few words as possible, only providing minor confirmations of 'yes' or 'no.'

Once the makeshift bed was set up, and all the instructions I could think of had been given out, I awkwardly took my leave. I still wasn't opposed to talking with him, but I figured that maybe the best thing for him right then was to be alone, at least for a little while. I figured that's what he'd been trying to find since his mom's confession earlier, and the League forcing him to be a part of the meeting and Kenny having to talk to him had been preventing him from just being by himself. So, I felt the best thing I could do right then was to allow him the space he'd been looking for.

I ended up giving him space for the whole day after the incident. Eric was mostly unseen around the house during that time. I stayed home and went about my average routine, but I only caught peripheral glimpses of him, stepping into the kitchen to get a snack, only to hear the door closing to the basement stairs minutes later, a dish or two in the sink when I went to look. I let him alone, assuring Kenny by texts that he hadn't gotten into any trouble under my watch. (I was officially his keeper now. Super.)

However, by the next night, I couldn't let him alone any more. I had been lying awake in my bed for an hour or so, contemplating what he must have been going through. I admittedly felt bad for him. I had watched him a bit during the meeting, and I could tell he was disturbed by the news he'd received. Not even he could deny how messed up his family tree was (though, obviously he wasn't the only one in the League; my parents weren't actual demons but they sure weren't angelic). I figured he must be really confused. And, dang it all, I felt the need to talk to him. We were still having our share of troubles in the civility department, but I felt like a great way to help repair that was to at least let him know that I was here to talk to him if he needed it.

I got out of bed and made my way downstairs to the living room. I saw through the crack under the door that the basement light was still on, so that meant Eric was probably still awake as well. I decided to check on him with the pretext of offering him a snack, in case he was still in a bad mood and snapped at me.

I opened the door cautiously and peered down the stairs. Wendy's parents had decorated their basement so that it was half utility room, with a washer and dryer on the right-hand side, and half alternate sitting area, with a sofa, rug, and television on a little rolling stand on the left. I had moved the television farther away when I'd helped Eric pull out the sofa. I couldn't see the whole of the room from my vantage point, but I did perceive one half of the sofa-bed. And Eric wasn't in it.

"Eric?" I called out, a bit concerned now. He hadn't left the house without my knowing, had he? I hadn't heard his car start up earlier. I opened the door fully and walked down a few steps, so that I could view the whole room.

It turned out, that my fears were premature. Eric was sitting on the opposite side of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. He looked up as I came down to halfway on the stairs. "What do you want?" he asked.

All right, this was going to be difficult, I knew it. Thankfully, though, I'd had plenty of experience dealing with Eric's unrelenting stubbornness, so I figured I was probably the most qualified member of the League to deal with him. "I was just seeing how you were doing and all. Are you sleeping okay?"

"It's two o'clock in the fucking morning and I'm sitting up in bed, Butters, does it _look _like I'm sleeping okay?"

"Well," I retorted, "since I'm up checking on you at two a.m. it's probably pretty obvious that I'm having trouble sleeping myself, isn't it?" Eric blinked and made a clicking noise with his tongue as he turned away from me again. To most people, it probably would have seemed that Eric hadn't relented at all, but I knew him well enough to discern that I had his permission to come down more into the room. That was the trick with Eric, the one that had taken me so painfully long to figure out; if you kept up with him and basically evaded his attacks at the same time as coming at him yourself, you could gain some ground. It sounds really complicated, but I knew what I was talking about, since I'd managed to perfect Eric-battle tactics over the years.

Proceeding on my gained territory, I went to the bottom of the stairs and walked over to the end of the bed, so that I was closer but still behind Eric. I ventured to advance farther, asking, "Do you want to talk?"

"No," he answered.

I ignored this response completely and sat down on the rug against the foot of the bed, with my back turned to his side. I couldn't see him anymore, and he'd only be able to see the top of my head if he turned to look at me, but we were close enough to carry on a conversation without me overstepping any boundaries Eric had mentally constructed. While I wanted him to work through stuff, I recognized that he was still in a real fragile place right now, and I didn't want to lose the trust we'd only just recently obtained again.

We sat there in silence for a while. I was content to wait. I had no idea what exactly he'd most want to talk about, anything from the anger or disappointment he felt toward his mother, to the identity of his new relative, to the inconvenience of sleeping in an unfamiliar basement. With my luck, it'd probably end up being that last option, as that would be the least productive.

I realized that I was going to have to begin the conversation, so, remembering the phone call I had intercepted the night before, I settled on the topic of his mother. I asked, "Have you talked to your mom at all?"

"No," he said again. I figured that he hadn't, since he most likely would have gone back home already if he had, or, at the very least, I would have heard him shouting into his phone from two flights up. I'd just been attempting the break the ice. Obviously, it hadn't worked as I'd hoped.

"Well," I tried next, "what are you going to do?"

"I dunno," was his response. I rolled my eyes knowing he couldn't see me. It was like trying to pull teeth from a brick wall… if brick walls had teeth.

There was silence again for a little while before I said, "It's okay, you know, whatever you want to say, I'll listen. I won't say anything back if you don't want. But you really should talk to _some_body, Eric. It's not gonna do you any good to keep it all inside."

I didn't get a response. I was about to give up and return upstairs when I heard him say quietly, "You started calling me by my first name again."

I quickly turned my head to look at him. It wasn't at all what I had anticipated – leave it to Eric Cartman to say the unexpected even when expecting the unexpected – but he'd finally commented on something, so that was good. I had always been one of the only few people who ever referred to Eric by his first name. When we were little, it seemed like common courtesy to me to call everyone by their given name; I had never really understood why the other kids thought 'Cartman' was exempt from that rule. As we'd gotten older, I hadn't felt any need for me to change my behavior. And by then, I'd recognized my crush for him, so I kept it up, hoping the uniqueness of my treatment toward him might get me noticed. Then, we'd actually been in a relationship (and we had, we really had achieved that deeper connection with each other, no matter what Eric might argue otherwise). But later, he hurt me, and we broke up. It was then that I began intentionally calling him by his last name. I saw it as sort of our final break in familiarity. He had denied any connection we shared, so, out of pain and anger, I ignored it as well. Yet, when I saw him so hurt over his mother, I wanted that familiarity back, so I used his first name again. This was the first time he'd ever addressed my name for him, though. I asked in reference to his observation, "Is that… okay?"

Eric shrugged his shoulders in place of an answer. I noticed that he was still wearing the clothes he'd worn yesterday. I had forgotten that he'd left his house in a hurry, so, of course, he wouldn't have thought to pack an overnight bag. I would have offered him some pajamas or something if I had anything that would fit him.

I pushed myself off the floor and tentatively approached his side of the bed. With just a hint of hesitation, I sat down next to him, still about an arm's length away. "It's true, you know," I told him. "You can talk to me."

Eric was still staring at the wall. He let out a vocal sigh before saying, "It's no big deal. I'm just pissed at my whore of a mom for sleeping with the fuckin' devil."

I couldn't help but laugh a little bit at how simply he'd put it. "Average family therapy stuff then, huh?"

I saw the corner of his mouth crack into a grin. That was something we'd always kind of had in common; unusual family units. My parents had been near insane before it was in style, and I'd cast them off in favor of a friend and her parents as surrogate guardians. Eric had a single mother, gone through a whole gamut of possibilities for a father, and then discovered his actual, slightly insane, half-brother. Another half-brother being the son of Satan almost just seemed like an absurd amendment. But still not outside the realm of possibility.

Content that he was okay, but recognizing that we wouldn't have any more of a 'conversation' that evening, I reached out my hand and patted his shoulder twice. Then, I used my other hand to lift myself off the bed. I was at the other side of the bed before I heard a soft, "Thanks," from behind me.

I smiled and said, "Welcome," as I mounted the stairs to leave him, hopefully to get some sleep.

I returned to my own bed and lay down, staring up at the ceiling. I still couldn't get my mind to quiet down, though. I just kept thinking of everything that had been happening since summer vacation had started. Although, we weren't in as bad a predicament as we had been during the R'lyeh crisis, it was definitely the worse we'd seen since then. Life had actually been fairly normal, for the most part, in the interim years. I'd had three relationships, and I'd changed a lot as a person.

My memories of that time of crisis weren't the best, since I hadn't been fully in control of my own mental faculties, but I knew they were bad. I also knew that I wasn't that person anymore, the one who'd played the notes of madness on my flute (which I also hadn't touched since), not caring who I condemned with their influence. But, with the help of my friends, I'd beaten the hold they'd had over me. Though I'd had my fair share, that had been the time when I'd been the _most_ lost, when I'd been the least myself. And, hopefully, I'd never be that person again – another reason why I had cast Chaos aside at the end of that series of events.

I realized that Eric was going through that same kind of time right now. But his dilemma wasn't a persona he could cast off. His foundation, his constant anchor in his life, was at stake. Aside from the rise of the Cult, when she'd fallen under the insanity's sway as well, his mother was his rock, and he didn't feel like he could rely on that right now. And that was scary.

I knew what scary was. I knew what being alone was. So, I knew that I could at least sympathize with what Eric was going through.

There had been a time when Eric had confided in me. And we'd been close. We'd shared one of our first kisses on the front steps of this very house. I hoped that now, so long after that time, we could still have something resembling that connection again, since I really did believe that it had been good for both of us, just as Liane Cartman had said.

I finally went to sleep, wishing that Eric and I could stop being exes, and instead be something closer to friends.

– – –

Token came over the next day to see Wendy. His presence alerted me to how extremely unusual it was that Eric was staying under our roof. Eric and Wendy had sort of dated during our junior year of high school, so that meant that she was kind of his ex as well. It may have been awkward for anyone else, but Wendy and I knew that Eric was harmless in the 'old boyfriend' department. He could be infuriating no matter what your past with him was, so it wasn't like it significantly changed our dynamics.

I could tell that Token wasn't too comfortable with it, though. I wasn't sure if the two of them were officially together again or anything, but Token still retained a certain amount of protectiveness for Wendy, which I thought was really sweet.

I let him in the front door, dressed as Marjorine that day, letting him know Wendy was waiting in her room, when he saw Eric sitting on the couch in the living room watching television. He didn't seem too surprised that he was there (I figured Wendy must have let him know), but he definitely didn't look too pleased with the arrangement. I stood by him, prepared to defend my case if I had to, but Token just glowered at Eric's back before tilting his head up to me in acknowledgment and taking the stairs two at a time. Just prior to Wendy's door closing, I thought I heard him say, "Does he really have to stay _here_?"

I felt another wave a minor guilt pass over me. Eric staying over had been my proposal, and while Wendy had assured me more than once that it was acceptable to her, I acknowledged that it was a pretty big favor to ask. I told myself that I would have to do something to show her my appreciation when this was all over. Though I wasn't sure how big a cake I'd have to make that would be equivalent to tolerating Eric Cartman in the house. God bless that girl for being such a good Samaritan. And teammate. And friend. And just generally an amazing person all around.

Later that evening, after Token had left and I was back up in my room sitting at my desk reading, my phone beeped with a text message. I picked it up and saw that it was a mass text from Kenny, or, rather, Mysterion, since I recognized that it was a coded message for us League members. It mentioned that Clyde (Mosquito) had some more information to share on the Ginger Separatist Movement. That seemed both ominous and promising.

Then, my phone beeped again, this time with a private message from the same sender. It read, _Saw ST downtown. Thought she was with you. Does she have a sister?_

Well, that was odd. 'ST' stood for Sally Turner, my friend who had supposedly joined up with a potential terrorist organization. Mysterion was referencing the mission he'd given me to try and come up with any information on her whereabouts. But 'downtown' was our code-word for the police department. So, that meant she was still in jail? How could she be? The Coon and I had definitely fought with her that night after the rest of the Infras had been captured. Maybe she had some way of getting in and out of the holding cell, although that didn't make much sense.

I knew Sally was an only child, so there was definitely no possibility of us mistaking her for someone else. Who else in town but Red had such unique, pretty hair?

Then again, it all kept coming back to red hair.

Concerned, I decided to try Heidi again as a source of information. I'd already asked her about Sally, and she unfortunately didn't have much to share, but, just in case, I figured I'd better follow up all my potential leads.

I punched her name into my speed dial. Thankfully, she wasn't otherwise occupied and picked up. After a bit of small talk (to make this seem like an average, no-I'm-not-trying-to-covertly-aquire-information-like-a-secret-spy-person conversation), I asked her if she'd heard anything new from Sally. I hid my worries from her, though, saying I just wanted to ask Sally about summer reading for a class we were both taking next semester, though there was no such assignment. It was the simplest story I could come up with. Just as I'd anticipated, her answer was negative.

"I'm sorry, Marj, but I really haven't been able to get in touch with her," Heidi told me over the phone. "But I wouldn't worry too much. She's probably on vacation with her parents and just forgot to mention it."

"Yeah, probably," I said, thinking, _if only it were that simple_.

"I'm glad you called though, I wanted to ask you something."

"Oh, what is it?"

"Well, I got these kooky-looking tickets in the mail for a carnival, and I wanted to know if you wanted to come with me?"

I leapt to my feet, horrified. "WHAT?" I yelled.

"I…I got these tickets in the mail—"

"I'm sorry, Heidi, I-I saw a spider," I made up quickly as an excuse for my outburst.

"Oh, okay." Heidi still sounded unsure.

"Listen, don't go to that carnival, all right? I've heard some things and it's actually a scam. They just want your money." I figured that wasn't too far from the truth, but I had to put my warning into average terms instead of supernatural ones.

"Oh. Was it on the news or something?" Heidi asked.

"No, but… I heard it from someone who got ripped off in another town. Just, don't go, all right? Promise me."

"Yeah, sure, Marj."

"Okay, I've gotta go now, but, just stay inside and don't open any more odd mail."

"Okay…"

I hated to leave Heidi like that, but I was just too anxious to pretend to be ignorant about what this meant.

I said goodbye as calmly as I could, which I didn't achieve very well, and dashed out of my room to Wendy's. I literally pounded on the door while I called for her inside. She opened it quickly, looking understandably concerned and asked, "What's wrong? Did Eric do something?"

"No, but—"

It was then we heard and incredibly loud and an incredibly pissed off, "GOD_DAMMIT!" _from downstairs in Eric's voice.

Wendy and I looked at each other for a beat, then, my previous dilemma momentarily forgotten, we both ran down the stairs to the kitchen. We found Eric still cussing at the microwave. There was smoke coming from inside it and he was trying to pry something out with a pair of tongs. It looked like one of the burritos left over from when we'd ordered lunch earlier that day, but it was still wrapped in its tinfoil packaging. Which meant that Eric must have been trying to microwave the food while it was in the tinfoil.

That boy was impossible.

Wendy stomped over and snatched the tongs (also metal) out of his hands. "You idiot!" she screamed. "You just fried my microwave!"

"Well, I can't help it if it just exploded on me!" was Eric's stellar defense.

"It's _your_ fault! You're not supposed to put metal in a microwave, everybody knows that."

Before they could argue any further, I cut in, "Eric, you're gonna get us a new microwave from your work, but right now, I've got something really important to tell you guys."

I related the news I'd received from Kenny and Heidi. Wendy's eyes went wide and Eric gave an annoyed vocal inflection.

Wendy asked, "She's not going, is she?"

"I told her not to," I said, "and I think I freaked her out enough, but I'm really starting to worry. I didn't know Heidi had any connection to a redhead."

"Maybe she's got the gene like some of the others," Wendy looked extra worried at this thought, and it made sense; she was one of those 'others.'

"Listen, I'm going to go over to Sally's house and try to get in there. Maybe I can find a clue or something."

"Okay, do you want some help?"

"No, I'm okay. Kenny gave me this as my mission, so I'll see it through."

"Good, cause I still haven't eaten my dinner, yet," said Eric. Wendy glared over at him and whacked his hand with the tongs she was still holding. "OW!" he whined. Knowing that the two of them would probably be at it for a little while over the ruined kitchen appliance, I excused myself and went upstairs to change into my Harmony gear.

I'd been over to Sally's house a few times already, as one of my day-time personas, hoping to talk to her. However, when I had knocked at the door, no one had answered. I knew her parents were out of town, but she should still be there, right? She definitely hadn't left with them, as Heidi had postulated; I'd seen the proof of that myself. But, if she was out roaming the streets, while also still being locked in a jail cell, there had to be something more to this lack of communication than I had previously considered.

Now, I was worried about Heidi as well. I didn't want my other friend any more involved in this dilemma than she already was. I hoped I at least might be able to save her from this still mysterious threat. I was getting more and more worried that something very wrong had happened to Sally…

I went around to the back door and removed lock-picking tools from one of the pockets on my utility belt. I was technically breaking-and-entering, but desperate times and all that.

It only took me a few seconds to work the door open. I'd been in Sally's house a couple times over breaks, but never extensively. We had mostly hung out in the living room, but, thankfully, we had also gone up to her bedroom a couple of times, so I knew which one was hers. I gave the downstairs rooms a quick once-over and, finding nothing suspicious, made my way upstairs.

I checked Sally's bedroom first, naturally. Nothing appeared too out of the ordinary. It mostly looked like she'd just gone out for the day. Her bed was made, a habit she always had, but nothing significant was missing, nor any sign of a struggle. The only thing that appeared like it didn't belong was on the desk, next to her closed laptop.

I couldn't turn on the lights without compromising my mission, so I took out a small flashlight I carried in another of my utility pockets and turned it on, to verify if my suspicions were correct. And, boy, were they. The piece of paper closest to me was an exact copy of the one Kyle and Red had each shared with the rest of us, an invitation to join the GSM. The only difference in Sally's was that the bottom portion requesting compliance was missing, which meant that she must have sent it back. But why would she do that? Why would she agree to join this group? She'd never been a sensationalist of any kind. She was fairly mild-mannered actually, which was one of the reasons why we were such good roommates at school, since we shared that quality.

There was no physical evidence of her motives, however, so I checked the other piece of paper. It was another letter, with the same logo. It read:

_Ms. Turner:_

_Your application has been processed, and the Carnival thanks you for your compliance. You have made the wise choice, and your information will be most helpful to our mission, and, as promised, you will be given proper remuneration for your efforts. As your price has already been collected, along with your signature, your next step involves only your arrival at the location marked below. Take care that this information stays only with you, Ms. Turner, as the town is not yet ready to be given our location._

_What is yours may yet be returned to you, but only with your acceptance of our Movement's guidelines. What is yours, you see, is also ours, but as one of us your cooperation is invaluable._

_We welcome you to the Carnival, Ms. Turner. You are truly helping to build a dream._

_Yours most sincerely,_

_Red Devil/Red Hair_

I looked at the bottom, excited that I had discovered some amazing information for the team, only to notice that a portion of this letter was ripped off along a perforation as well, presumably with the promised address. _Aw, dang it_, I thought, so much for outstanding leads. Still, now we had a copy of the reply letter, and knew basically what was expected of those who wished to join, at least initially. I picked up the papers and tucked them away in my skirt pocket; no way was I leaving them there at my friend's house when I had no idea where she was.

I found nothing else in her room, so I made my way to her parents' bedroom. I needed to be thorough. I found essentially the same thing; nothing was significantly out of place, and everything seemed to still be there.

Wait a minute, everything _was_ really still there. I looked at the vanity. It held a brush and everyday jewelry. On a thought, I hurried into the master bathroom, among the usual sink countertop items, two toothbrushes rested in a stand to the left. I hurried back into the bedroom and opened the door to the walk-in closet. I didn't find what I was looking for in there, but I noticed there was no empty space; no row of hangers without clothes, no bare carpet for missing shoes aside from one pair on each side. I whirled around and fell to the floor, checking under the bed. There, I found what I had been searching for – suitcases, a complete set of them.

There was nothing missing from this room other than clothes for a day, what would be expected if someone was leaving for work in the morning. If Sally's parents were 'on a trip,' then why were all of their clothes, everyday items, and suitcases still here?

They could have been recruited by the GSM as well, but, the thing was, neither of Sally's parents had red hair; she'd inherited it from her grandfather.

So, then, the question was, where were they really…?

Confused and concerned, I took my leave, finding nothing else incriminating or helpful around the house. I had at least gotten a copy of the second letter this group was sending out to its recruits, that had to be beneficial to the League.

I still couldn't figure out why Sally had been spotted in two different places. I knew she was one of the ones in jail, but that person I had fought definitely didn't look like an imposter. I could say with a fair amount of certainty that, if there was such a person, they weren't using her house as a base of operations.

I kept mulling things over as I made my way back home. If one of them was a imposter, which one was the real one? And why were they using her visage as a cover? Sally didn't have any particular connections with anyone in town, so there'd be no great strategic gain in it, not that I could see. Maybe both of them were posers.

But then, where was the _real_ Sally Turner…?

I could only hope that the League would find the answers soon. Maybe Mysterion had more information that could shed some light on this… mystery.

I did make a firm decision in my mind, though, and that was to be much more watchful of all the people closest to me whom the GSM might have an interest. I would still try to figure out what was wrong with Sally, but, in the meantime, I had to protect those I didn't want to get hurt. People like Wendy… and Eric.

Eric probably needed the most looking after. He was still in rough shape, and, from past experience, I knew he wouldn't function well without her. He wouldn't have his guard up as much as he should when he was being specifically targeted. I promised myself, in tandem with the promise I'd given to his mother, that I would try to protect him.

When I returned to my room, I removed my mask and brought out the letters I had taken from Sally's desk. Reflecting on it, the house had kind of creeped me out a little; it had just been there, like houses you see in horror movies when there was some catastrophe and everyone had left in a hurry and just never come back. It had looked abandoned. Where would they have all gone? Had they been kidnapped?

Then, I focused on the words toward the bottom of the second letter.

_What is yours may yet be returned to you…_ _What is yours, you see, is also ours…_

And I realized: they had taken her parents.

– – –

_Kyle_

There are, apparently, laws of the universe that standard human logic cannot touch. I knew, from events of my childhood, that there was much to be said for the power of the imagination, and of course we had proven the existence of dimensions other than our own. The pocket of reality confined to dreams, however, was something that scared me.

As far as I know, unless one trains and trains, there is no way to control what comes in dreams. Some people are lucid dreamers, some people have nightmares, some people can only dream in black and white—it varies and varies and varies, and I had never put much stock into studying dreams, since I myself rarely think about what I dream at night after I've woken up.

Given the new information that Kenny picked up from Henrietta, however, I started thinking more about the concept of dreams and the subconscious. I ended up spending a fair amount of time at the base with Clyde and Bebe after Kenny and Henrietta put forward the notion that Damien might have his sights set on places not much unlike R'lyeh known as the Dreamlands. Clyde and Bebe had begun rooting through the League's archives, of the records recovered from the early part of the 20th century: accounts of people—many of them artists—having vivid dreams of Cthulhu. It happened again and again through the century, right up to the man Wilcox we were still dealing with now.

And while maybe the Dreamlands and Spaces Between, left unaccounted for after the closing of the Gate and the disappearance of R'lyeh, defied mortal logic, the rest of the universe was balanced. That much, I could understand. It was tough, but I felt scared and proud all at once.

After all, I had a visual of the universe.

Kenny copied down to the exact specifications a diagram of various geometric laws of the universe, straight out of a book from a place that should not have existed on any sphere. One point led to another, and another, and another across the ancient mandala, connecting planets, stars, Earth, Heaven, Hell—

This was knowledge that perhaps man wasn't meant to understand, but it became our job in the Shadow League to begin to make sense of it. To find the remaining Spaces Between and stop whatever plan Damien Thorn was going for before it could start.

So I used the chart to my advantage. Thinking of things in terms of circles and triangles made sense to me when it came to the astute way I managed to lock onto the world around me. The more I practiced, the more I could sense connections; the more open I was to acceptance, the faster I'd be able to build back my abilities, and hopefully expand upon them.

Odd as it seemed from the start, the best place for me to begin my hypothesized 'reading' of _life_ rather than just objects, was the bookstore at which I worked. Due to our abhorrent lack of security cameras, I already knew that I was safe to test out my psychic quirk in the back storage rooms when I got sent on re-stock duty, and since there was a fairly steady traffic flow of people through the store, I figured I might as well attempt to see if what Kenny had suggested had any real merit.

It really was all about honing versus ignoring. I'd wanted normal for the past few years, and normal was what I'd gotten. Now that that was no longer an option…

I'd come to the realization, partially thanks to Stan and partially thanks to Kenny and Karen, that I shouldn't lay my ability to rest anymore. Even if I strained my mind to the point of exhaustion again, I couldn't just rely on that quirk to come in and help me out in times of major duress, as it had more or less been from the start. At the very beginning, I'd only been able to cause any kind of gravitational re-arrangement or burst light bulbs when I got pushed to my limit. When I got really, really fucking angry. Which, generally, I was, out on the field. Or, it was aggression when it came to fighting. I had opponents: I'd take them out. The quirk had been there to help me.

When Kenny began stressing that this was becoming more of a covert operation, though, I went a different route with training myself. Stan loved helping me figure things out, and I valued his input more than anyone's. He knew me; I trusted him. He knew what would push me, and when I should stop, he could tell what I was struggling with and where to help me out.

We started small, of course. Whenever I so much as thought about what I needed to do to hone my mind, electric lights were bound to react. The electric flow in the air, it seemed, reacted to my focused brainwaves. Easy enough for me to accept. Logical.

And now I had that chart. I had a visual of solid connections between logic and illogic, between reality and… who knows what else. The chart was at least a stepping stone to understanding, which was all I could really ask for. (Happy twenty-first birthday to me, I guess: here's some secrets about the webs connecting everything in the universe.) (Actually, that's pretty cool, come to think of it.)

After what happened to Kenny, with the Shadow (or whatever this new 'gift' from Damien truly was), I really wanted to step up my game. It's a really fucking good thing I get competitive, too, let me just say that. Even if it's a fight with myself. If I doubt something, I have this dire _need_ to figure out the truth behind it. So when both doubt and interest arose in my wanting to see if I actually could psychically tap into the static-electric, or gravitational, or what have you, readings of living things, I took advice from Kenny and Clyde and took a little trip down to Park County Station to see, first of all, if I could read anything from those Ginger clones.

There was this weird, unspoken _Coon wanting to do everything-slash-Mysterion not wanting the Coon to do any missions alone_ thing going on lately, so the mission had ended up being me, Mosquito, Mysterion and the Coon, who honest to God would just not shut the fuck up about the fact that if I could prove that the clones weren't alive, he'd be right about Gingers not having souls.

"You know, this shit is already getting old," I chastised him before we had quite reached the station, "and I really don't need that 'no souls' bullshit right now."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the Coon scoffed. "I've just been over here having to live with the Wonder-Girls and dealing with the fact that I've got two evil half-brothers—"

"That doesn't sound like coping," Mosquito cut in, "that sounds like gloating."

"Agreed," said Mysterion, putting a cap on the whole thing. "Come on, Murphy's letting us in through the back."

"Is Yates really being that much of a dick right now?" I wondered.

"He's gonna be a problem." Mysterion nodded.

"Is the GSM seriously blackmailing and kidnapping to recruit?"

Butters had touched on some weird shit, discovering the weird disappearance of Sally Turner's parents, coupled with her apparently multifarious involvement with the current opposition… and apparently Mrs. Yates wasn't 'noticing' anything strange about her husband lately, which we pretty much assumed meant that Damien had her in some kind of grip.

"It's looking that way."

"Then what the hell are the clones?" I had to ask.

"That's what we're hoping to find out."

They definitely weren't human.

When Murphy showed us to the Gingers' holding, they were all lined up, sitting, awaiting instruction. Or just… waiting. After letting the initial eeriness of that sight pass, I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes, letting my mind tap into everything around me that was within my possible reach to move.

I had been able to fly before, by manipulating not myself but my glider. With practice, I probably could again. I could sense that, my weapons, the others' gear… and a couple dozen things that may as well have been large rocks or sculptures. My head started throbbing, buzzing with sudden activity as I opened my eyes to find the cells full of only those incredibly human-like Infra-Reds.

Once I realized exactly what it was my quirk was reacting to, I winced a little, but I refused to show any kind of confusion around Murphy, who had always had so much faith in the Shadow League. I'd vent it all out to Stan later, I told myself; right now, I just had to focus and be practical. Practical—right. Logical about something that defied logic:

False life.

That's what we were dealing with. Animated, passably human clones created using patterns of the 'volunteers' the GSM was collecting through their letter efforts.

"Anything?" Mysterion wondered.

I managed a sturdy enough nod. "They're not real," I announced.

"The hell do you mean not real?" the Coon demanded. "They're right there."

"Right," I said, "but…" I drew in a breath in order to buy myself a couple seconds of gathering my thoughts. Nothing about this felt moral. But if we were dealing with dreams and either sub- or ultra-reality, here… "I can read them," I confirmed for everyone present.

"And?"

"And I can't read people," I said as a reminder. "I have zero psychic connection, that I know of, to living things. Whatever these guys are, they're not alive."

"Are… are they robots?" Murphy ventured to ask. "This is incredible news."

I shook my head. "No, if they were robots, they'd be made up of different parts. I can read machines, and these are more like—"

"Wax?" Mysterion offered.

Oh, shit.

Shit, that would figure, wouldn't it? None of us said it, but the four of us were immediately on the same page. Time to start putting more stock in that Carnival, I had to admit. We could very well have been fighting nothing but a moving, breathing wax museum.

Which was exactly why I was now spending half of the shelving hour of my shift at the bookstore sneaking looks at books about the history of carnivals. I'd looked so distracted during my register shift, apparently (sorry to my managers, but I was concentrating probably too hard on trying to see if I could get my brain to react to… I don't know, body heat or _some_thing from the customers), that I was asked to do shelving in the lesser-visited sections of the shop. Luckily, the US History section was one of them, and while nobody was around, I could steal glances at helpful literature and photography.

It was all I could do not to form essays in my head about the history I was digging into; I told myself to instead just focus on things that might help us. Wax museums. Of the Vincent Price variety. I had to believe that Tenorman would go to any lengths necessary to make this a memorable Carnival in the history of those in his and Cartman's history, and with Damien involved, the horror-movie route seemed right up the madman's alley.

In addition to wax museums, too, I started pouring over the various other attractions this secret Carnival might try to host. The possible prospect of a sideshow was what disturbed me the most.

Suppose Damien was keying in on these 'gifts' and 'prizes' just to exploit them…?

As I was thumbing through a few sepia-toned prints of carnival grounds in the 1920s Midwest, I began to get the sense that I wasn't alone. Which, for a second, got me excited and nervous that maybe now that I wasn't even thinking about it, my mind had been able to actually lock in on something. Well, some_one._

I didn't believe it anymore once I felt myself get tugged back into a stealthy hug. Of course I'd know if Stan was right behind me, I told myself. I knew his footsteps, I knew how he'd try to hide his breath when he wanted to sneak up on me. There were logical excuses for everything. I hadn't 'read' him. I'd just known.

Not that I was complaining.

"Hey!" I let myself laugh out.

"Hi, Kyle!" Stan exclaimed, kissing the side of my neck from behind. "Happy birthday!"

Now I did let go and laugh. "Oh, my God," I realized, "it is, isn't it?"

"Oh, yeah, right you forgot," my boyfriend grinned. He kissed my cheek this time. "Twenty-one! You can sit at the big kids' table again."

"Oh, boy, I've been waiting for that," I joked back at him, grabbing up at his hair with my right hand. "You still wanna celebrate, though?" I wondered. "You know, even with all this weirdness going on."

Stan let out a little sigh, and rested his head on my shoulder. "I'd kinda like to," he admitted. "I hope we can, anyway. Come on, don't tell me you don't want to. You're twenty-one, we should do something… other than… stand around in a bookstore."

"Well, welcome to _Exciting Dates with Kyle Broflovski,"_ I said as I turned to face him. "Today's topic is the ISBN."

"Oh, come on, I bet you I can do better than that," Stan grinned.

"I'm sure you can," I said. "Sorry," I added, smiling for him. "Just getting to that point where, uh… day job and evening job are overlapping."

"I hear ya." Stan smirked, ruffled my hair, and gave my forehead a quick kiss before he stood back and knocked the knuckles of his free hand against the book I realized I was still holding. "So what's so important you forgot it was your birthday?" he ventured to ask. I glanced at the book I'd grabbed briefly before holding it up for Stan to take a look at the title. "Woah, dude. Carnival sideshows are fucked up."

"Yeah, no kidding," I sighed, glancing at the cover once again before sliding the book of antiquated oddities back onto its oft-neglected shelf. "I can only imagine what this particular one might try to offer."

I saw Stan eye the book again. "Here's hoping we can do something before we need to find out," he said.

"Please," I breathed out.

I stole a glance at my watch, immediately disgruntled to find that I still had another hour and a half of work to go, and I had to switch to inventory within minutes. Stan shrugged it off, and picked up where I had left off, spending the full hour and a half in the book store. While I was doing numbers—which occasionally required me to take a manual count of shelved stock—I noticed that he'd shift around (look around at the music section, or magazines just so he wasn't giving himself away) now and then, but by the time my shift ended, Stan had compiled a short list, in the pocket notebook he'd been keeping on him since the Carnival fiasco started, of new ideas and questions pertaining to the situation at hand.

"How's your head?" he asked me as we left the store.

"Mm… fine," I decided on saying, adding in a little shrug. "Sorry you're looking after me like I'm some manic something-or-other."

"Don't even worry about it," he said, fussing with my hair again. "You wanna stop thinking for a little while?"

"That'd be amazing," I admitted. "You got a plan?"

"Depends. You hungry?"

"I could be."

We took a long walk around town, and then he treated me to an early dinner, during which we managed to have a perfectly normal conversation about the upcoming semester, covering topics that were easier on my mind than wondering how the fuck Damien was churning out clones of people from town and why the fuck Tenorman was still nowhere to be seen and whether or not I'd ever be able to psychically identify human bodies. Other guys my age may well have avoided topics like, oh, apartment situations for the coming school year, and academics, and home life, but fuck me if I didn't like taking some opportunities to squeeze that dose of normal back into my own conversations.

Neither of us were up for much after that. Other than perpetuating normality for a little while. Since any gathering with the guys would have pretty much turned into a work-related meeting, I sent out a mass text saying that I was holding off birthday things until after we'd driven the Carnival out of town. To which Clyde, a great hero and a great leader but as college as they come nonetheless, responded, _END OF SUMMER KEGGER._ Which I rolled my eyes at and would ignore until I was in general conversation with Clyde again. I could deal shit back verbally much better than I could over texts, and I assumed the others probably had a few things to say on the 'kegger' matter themselves.

Or the sheer idea of 'end of summer.'

Still wanting to do _some_thing, though, Stan and I bought a bottle of pricey wine at the liquor store where, honestly, they'd dole shit out to twelve year olds with fake IDs, but whatever, I had to celebrate a milestone birthday somehow. Then, with no word of missions or meetings coming through either of our phones, we managed to relax for a while on the new sofa in Stan's living room with the well-chilled wine.

And a lot on our minds.

God, even with it being just the two of us, I realized, we had too much League-related work to talk about, other conversation fell aside.

"Anything else we need?" Stan wondered, reaching an arm across the back of the sofa to invite me to sit against his side.

"Other than something actually resembling a party?" I tried to joke.

"Oh, come on, do you care all that much?"

I let out a sight sigh, and relaxed against him. "No," I admitted, "not really. I mean, I wasn't exactly expecting that _this_ kinda stuff would be going on right around now, but we can't help that, I guess. Besides," I added, shifting so I could take the wine glass Stan was now offering me, "hopefully we'll have done something about all this by the end of the summer. Kenny said he wanted to do a thing for July Fourth. 'Course, that was before any of this."

"Gives us a month," Stan offered. He picked up his own glass of wine, but watched me before taking a sip.

I shivered, considering his deduction. "A month," I repeated. "Dude, these guys seem organized, but are you getting the feeling like they're just buying time? Like… I don't know, it's kinda pissing me off."

Stan was silent for a few seconds, then moved so that his arm was more firmly set around me, and suggested, "Use it, I guess."

"I guess," I sighed. "I just—I really hope we can beat these guys before summer's out, you know?"

"Mmhmm. We all do," Stan consoled me.

I stared down at my glass of wine, letting myself fall deep into thought as if I were holding a cup of tea instead, trying to find answers in the leaves. Bring down the son of the devil in a month? Hopefully we could manage that. There was a balance we had to maintain. That was our mission.

Keep things as they are. We couldn't let Damien or Tenorman create any kind of rift between the balance kept between Earth, Heaven and Hell as it was known now; if the Spaces Between were breached, and made accessible, we could probably very well be risking seeing some of Cthulhu's old friends show up, and everything we had worked toward would have proven—

I took a sip of wine. It stung my tongue until the sweetness trickled through. The sensational drink felt warm going down my throat, and after another sip, the warmth spread throughout. "Man, this is really good," I commented.

"Yeah?"

"Oh, jeez," I realized, glancing at Stan, mid-sip on his own glass. "Sorry, did we want to toast or anything?"

He grinned after giving the idea a shot, then said, "I think anything we'd toast to is just… I dunno, stuff we've already been talking about."

"Okay, so, let's do that now," I decided, turning to face him in profile. Ceremoniously, I held out my wine glass, and declared, "We _can and will_ beat these bastards before that Carnival can open its fucking doors."

"Amen," said Stan, clinking his glass on mine. We drank to that, and to un-voiced but heavily understood wishes for success. "Oh, one more thing," he added.

"Hmm?"

Stan refreshed our glasses, and as he set the bottle back down on the floor, he leaned in to kiss my cheek. "Happy birthday, Kyle."

"Thank you," I said, smiling as I initiated a proper kiss back.

"Mm. We'll do something fun for it soon, too, I promise. Once this is over."

"Mmhmm." We each took a couple more sips, which got a buzz going in my brain of a much, much different variety than the kind that gave me such a mental workout. "Who says we don't have time for a little fun now, though?" I suggested, brushing up closer to Stan. Another rush of wine with another kiss.

"Yeah?"

"Mmhmm."

No interruptions. We didn't even finish the bottle of wine, but we had no need to.

We were able to pass the night, making the most of having a full evening together with no other responsibilities to attend to. It was always immeasurably comforting to me, even long past the afterglow, to just lie awake with Stan for a while. Even if twenty minutes passed between either of us said anything, it didn't feel like silence. It was kind of like meditation, honestly. I just got so fucking relaxed. My mind got to rest for a while, and we could just exist.

Of course, with lives as full and hectic as ours, even sleep couldn't keep us from active conversation. Despite feeling pretty damn rested and relaxed, I slept rather erratically that night. Not as bad as he did, apparently, since the next thing I knew, we were both fully awake again, Stan catching his breath after waking from an admittedly strange dream.

Maybe the problem was that we were both over-thinkers, in our own right. I come about it from an analytical perspective, while Stan tends to thrive on creativity. He's not the biggest fan of visual art, no, but nor is he the biggest fan of social media and that sort of thing. He's un-plugged, in other terms. He likes things to be real, to promote human talent and potential, rather than buy into the dumbing of society. Creative minds, though, sort of have a history of acting upon dreams.

Just look at Wilcox, and his family tree. Many of them visual artists, many of them prone to nightmares. More vivid nightmares than the ones it seemed my boyfriend started having, sure, but there was still that connection. And I didn't like it.

"You're not dreaming about Purgatory, are you?" I dared to ask him once the topic inevitably came up.

"No." Stan latched his left arm around me, and when I shifted to touch his back with my right hand, I felt a small gathering of cold sweat. "I don't think so, anyway. I'm not really dreaming about anything."

I grabbed onto his shirt. "So… wait, really?" I wondered. "I go plenty of nights without dreaming. That's kind of a good thing, yeah?"

"I don't know," Stan sighed. "Even if there're no images, I get the feeling while I'm asleep like there's just… something. Something I overlooked, or déjà vu or something."

_"Déjà vu?"_ I repeated, shifting again. I held Stan's face in my hands and looked him straight in the eyes. When he'd had a little brush with madness, his eyes had started to wander, and then stare at nothing. At things that did not exist. "Stan, _talk to me _about this shit! Jesus!"

"I—but it's the kind of thing where I can't tell _what_ it is," Stan said it his defense. "I'm sorry, I just… and I _do_ talk to you, you know that." I held my breath for a moment, still studying his eyes. Nothing seemed wrong. He looked a little tired, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't, under even just the simple circumstance of getting a little over an hour of sleep. When I felt myself relax, Stan showed a smile, and began to pet back my hair with his left hand, grabbing at curls only to smooth them down. "What I know, you know, Kyle," he said softly. "If I leave out details, it's shit that even I don't understand. Okay?"

I sighed, settled in, and said, "All right."

"It's a weird time for everyone," Stan added.

"That's almost an understatement."

"No kidding. But we're good?"

"Yeah, Stan, we're good," I said, hoping I hadn't acted too rashly. "I just get worked up."

"Lots to think about lately," he offered.

"Mmhmm. Just… watch yourself, though, okay?" I said. "Let me know if shit starts bothering you."

"Will do," Stan smiled.

Whatever happened, though, I readied myself to do whatever I needed to should Stan's discomforts with dreams and proneness to nightmares become something of a curse in its own right. I didn't want to think about things that dark, but I had to be prepared. We looked after each other, simple as that. I'd been through R'lyeh with him, and I'd go to Hell and back with and for him, too. That was all either of us needed to know, and all that mattered.

If only for that reaffirmation, too, I was glad I could say that I pretty much did have a pretty good birthday, all things considered.

– – –

The following day, however, was a whirlwind of headaches. Some were perfectly normal, brought on by regular old stress, but a fair deal of them were not. And by the end of the day I was left with a few disturbing images quite literally burned into my mind.

I went through the motions of waking up at Stan's: shower, find something to wear, accept Sharon's kind offer for breakfast, _weather the fuck out of Randy's attempts to make sex jokes at me,_ reassure Sharon that, no, Randy wasn't bothering me all that much, gather belongings, and head to work.

Stan drove me, and offered an end of the day ride as well, since none of us knew when something might come up. I thanked him with a swift but warm kiss, wished him a good day, and stepped out of the car and into another day of attempting to both hone and conceal my quirk at work.

I was not allowed to check my phone at work, but _every single one of us_ employed at the book store ignored that rule at least twice. When I did check, I noticed five from Ike. He'd been up to something all day, but I couldn't let his obsessions become mine for the day, so I ignored the texts until I got home. Stan dropped me off, and drove home only to park his car for the evening, since our plans would most likely involve some kind of mission.

Good call. The moment I passed through the door of my house, I knew that I had the rest of the day cut out for me.

It started with my brother darting down the stairs, iPad in hand; the second he'd reached the floor, he glanced up from the screen briefly to say, "Hey. Awesome. You're home. Let's go."

"Uh, _hi,_ and what the fuck?" I said in return.

Ike shook his head. "Missions all day, buddy," he said, sounding short of breath. "Scanner's goin' nuts, Yates is definitely hiding something, and we've really gotta—"

"Can I, like, get some water first?" I interrupted crossly, holding up a hand. "And can you catch your breath, wait two seconds, and put down that stupid tablet?"

My brother frowned, squinching his unreadable black eyes up at me. I just lifted my eyes skyward and brushed past him to the kitchen, where I poured myself a glass of filtered water. I took a couple of calming sips and passed back into the dining room, where I noticed—and had neglected to before—my brother's girlfriend, looking a little bored but a little dejected from where she sat in Ike's usual seat.

"Uh… hey, Karen," I said, lifting my free hand in a bit of a wave. "What's up?"

"Your ridiculous brother," she answered.

"What? Ike? Why?"

Karen glanced over toward the front door, from which Ike had barely moved before he'd started checking something on his tablet again. "Ike, we're talking about you!" she called over.

"Uh-huh."

"Ike, for fuck's sake!"

"Sorry, I'm sorry, sorry!" Ike stopped what he was doing, flipped the cover around to close his tablet for the time being, and jaunted into the dining room. He seemed to be much less worried about the fact that he'd essentially been ignoring his literal angel of a girlfriend in favor of one of his many League-related devices than either Karen or I were. "Stuff's just getting real heated right now, you know?"

"Did you finish running whatever you had to run?" Karen asked him, tiredly.

"Yeah, Kar, sorry."

Karen gave him a little look over, then smiled a tiny bit and managed to get in a mocking whispered, _"Soo-_rry." Ike got in a little grin, and Karen stood in order to slowly step over to where he stood. "You tell Kyle yet?"

"Tell me what?" I wondered. I almost made a, _You guys finally gonna get married or something?_ jab, but given Karen's nearly-sorry state, I passed over it, figuring this wasn't the time.

"So those goggles, right?" said Ike, flipping back the cover of his tablet.

"You can say it without showing it," Karen encouraged him, flipping the tablet closed again. "Go ahead."

While half of me was still wondering what was going on between them, I focused on listening to whatever Ike's discovery was. Big, apparently.

"I tried them on," he announced, showing a broad, quintessentially Canadian grin. "And I cracked them."

"Cracked them, as in…?" I prompted.

"Figured out what else they do, other than flash information. Did a whole outing with 'em!"

I nearly dropped my glass of water. "You _what?"_ I yelped.

"I tried on the Infra-Red goggles and got 'em out on the field."

_"WHY,_ Ike, why the _hell_ would you do something so fucking—_why?"_ I sputtered out. "That's fucking ridiculous, it could—I-I don't know, why didn't you check in about this?"

"I was texting you all day, Kyle."

"Fuck," I growled, pulling my phone out of my pocket.

Yeah, sure enough, the second text from Ike read, _Gonna try out those goggles in mission mode. Don't freak out, I know what I'm doing._ The one following that read, _Courtesy text because it worked. Just saying._

"Dude, Ike, what the fuck?" I said, slipping my phone back into my pocket before taking a less-than-calming stress sip of water.

"Come on," my brother said in his defense. "Look, the goggles didn't have any kind of jack or USB; I couldn't rig 'em to the system to get any data. You can't deny that we need as much help _from_ the GSM as we can get, so I tried 'em on, and I'm glad I did."

If nothing else, Karen's rather serious nod made me sigh out my nerves and give my brother a little slack on the situation. It was easy for me to forget, sometimes, that Ike was fifteen. That I'd seen a fair deal of weirdness in League situations when I was fifteen, and that I had to give him more credit. I just got protective and nervous.

"All right," I said, evening my tone. "What'd you find out."

"Kay, so…" Ike tried to open his tablet again; Karen rolled her eyes and just nudged his arm, which got him to close it and keep his eyes on me. "We already know they give off mission information. Who else has tried 'em on, Butters? Cartman? Well, here's the thing, they, like, jump-start react to anyone with Ginger DNA."

"Ugh," I scoffed, "really?"

"Yeah. Which Cartman's got, so I'm pretty sure the info got back to whatever their main system is. Butters should be safe, and so am I. I was gonna get started seeing if I could search through the goggles' computer to see if it gives any kinda location for where they actually did send Cartman's info—"

"Oh dear God, Jesus, fuck, please tell me they're not going to clone _him,"_ I groaned. That would have been all we needed. That really would've been the fucking Apocalypse.

"Ike was thinking if we find the system, we can stop them before they do," said Karen.

I nodded. "So, you find the location?"

"Not yet, which is why I've gotta keep checking this thing," Ike told me, holding up his iPad. "But I found out that the Infras're called for a mission tonight," he added more positively. "Guess they hadn't hit up the Harrisons yet; that address came up as the key target for tonight."

I almost dropped my water again. "Th-the_ Harrisons?"_ I repeated.

In Gary Harrison's immediate family, though, I realized, three members had red hair: Gary's mother, his elder sister, Jenny, and his younger brother, David. David, who just happened to be Karen's ex-boyfriend, had, according to Gary, left Mormonism at the age of fifteen, out of both anxiety about the Mission work he would have had to do when he turned nineteen, and differing beliefs on a few subjects. He was now out of state, as far as I knew… so was Jenny, come to think of it. She and her young family had settled down outside of South Park.

But Gary and his younger sister, Amanda, still fit the bill for GSM targets, though I did have to scorn Damien in my head for going after such moral, devout people.

"Yeah," said Ike. "So while Mysterion's heading a little thing in town tonight, I got Token agreeing to head a B-mission at the Harrisons'. You in?"

"Uh, of course," I nodded. I could pretty much sign Stan right up, as well; he and Gary had a good friendship, sure, but a damn important working relationship, too. Gary was still Toolshed's go-to for arsenal building and re-stocking.

"Great. I mean, of course Gary and Amanda wouldn't ever answer those letters, but I wouldn't put it past maybe David—"

_"Ike,"_ Karen warned through her teeth.

"What? He'd be the one most likely to—"

"Shut _up_ if you're still jealous, Ike," Karen demanded, stepping in front of her boyfriend in order to get full eye contact. "I'll have Kenny take you off your own mission if this is gonna turn into something driven off fucking _jealousy."_

"Who—who says I'm jealous?" Ike argued, un-convincingly.

"You _are,_ Ike, and I don't want you making any stupid, unfounded claims about David!"

"Well, maybe it's not unfounded, Karen," Ike said. He then glanced over at me, requesting, "You mind, buddy?"

Oh. Huh. I passed a look between the two of them. Karen's arms were folded, but it didn't take a second to realize that she wasn't cross; her hands gripped her upper arms as if she were enfolding someone in an embrace. She was keeping herself enclosed. Ike, on the other hand, leaned back against the table, long fingers clamped around the edge, back rigid.

"S-sure thing," I said, starting to take my leave.

Weird, I thought as I hid myself in the living room, allowing myself enough of an angle to glance back at the two of them. I'd thought that things were going pretty well for them, honestly. Kenny and I had both been a little skeptical when Karen and Ike had started going out, but I'd been growing increasingly positive about the influence the two appeared to have been having on each other.

My brother did have a tendency toward jealousy, though, and this started to come through as his voice carried out from the kitchen: "He's not like the rest of the family, Kar, that's all I'm saying."

"No," Karen corrected strongly. "Maybe David left the LDS Church, but he's not a fucking—he wouldn't, all right?"

"Yeah, well, where is he, then?" Ike wanted to know.

"In Seattle! He was at a Buddhist retreat and now he's—"

"Yeah? That a fact?"

"Yes, Ike, it is! Jeez!"

"He tell you that?"

"We _text,_ Ike, we're _friends,_ can you _please…"_

Curiosity got the better of me. Well, all right, curiosity, plus older brother protectiveness. Karen and Ike were the League when the rest of us weren't around… I wondered how smoothly things had been going during their school year meetings and missions. I'd been hoping for their relationship to get stronger, not cause a kind of greedy strain.

I looked around the corner, just as I heard the front door open and close. I whipped my head around to find that Stan had returned, and I quickly lay one index finger over my lips, shook my head, and waved him over to where I was standing. He looked confused, but obliged, only to whisper, "What's going on?"

"I dunno, but I think Ike and Karen're fighting."

"Really? Shit, that sucks!"

"I know! Ssh."

I peered around the corner again, feeling bad for spying on my brother, but wanting to see just how serious the current spat might be.

"Would you _look_ at me, Ike?" Karen smacked Ike's wrist when he went to issue a command on the tablet's screen, and Ike's head shot up. He was suddenly aware, and heavily apologetic. "I swear, Ike, you are chained to that thing," Karen said disapprovingly. "And I really, really wish you wouldn't get jealous. David's old news, Ike, really. Can we focus? On… o-on the mission, yeah, but on us, and…

"I'm worried about you," Karen continued. "I just… I really, really care about you, and I get worried when you check out and plug in. I want you to be careful, okay? Please, just promise me that?"

Ike took a pause to gather himself, for there to be nothing but silent direct contact between himself and his girlfriend. I knew that Ike really cared for her, and that a breakup could tear him. I certainly didn't want to see that happen; Ike just had to wake up and be a little more responsible in his relationship, just as he was about work. "Yeah," Ike said, pulling Karen in for a hug. "I'm sorry, Karen," he added.

"I'm sorry, too," Karen sighed out. "I mean, if I give you reason to worry about that stuff."

"Sounds like it's all worries right now, eh?"

_"Eh?"_ Karen teased back, lightly tapping his shoulder.

"Anyway," said Ike, and I saw him squeeze his girlfriend in tighter to him, "I promise not to get jealous, 'kay? We've got stuff we've gotta do."

"And then can we talk about us?" Karen asked hopefully.

"Sure thing," Ike told her encouragingly.

"And lay off the tech, just a little, baby, please?" Karen requested.

Asking Ike to 'lay off the tech' was kind of like asking me to not over-analyze. While not blood-related, Ike and I were creatures of very similar habits. Hell, he'd even taken over for my old place as primary tech for the League when he first joined on. We were both tech-savvy, so I knew that Karen had reason to be worried about Ike's habits. Which, again, got me worried, but which I could not get involved in.

"Yeah," Ike said. "I really will."

The spat was signaled to be over when Karen tugged Ike in to kiss him. Seeing how much that little action seemed to comfort them, I turned away and signaled for Stan to follow me further into the living room, where we could wait for the other two. I did hope that Ike would kind of get the hint that Karen was really not impressed with his attachment to devices; hopefully the fight wouldn't have to be repeated.

He'd gotten me charged about the mission we'd need to embark on that night, which was exactly what conversation became once the four of us were together in one room. Stan made the effort to, as Toolshed, call Gary to give him the warning about the GSM attack, and advised him to take as many safety precautions as necessary before night fell.

While it may have been a last-minute plan, I was glad to be getting more field time in. After all, we had that reception date approaching, and had to spring at any opportunities the GSM gave us to push them back, if not gain further understanding, or the upper hand.

– – –

While Mysterion, the Guardian Angel, Mosquito and the _obnoxiously persistent_ Coon worked on setting up checkpoints and parameters around Tenth Circle in preparation for the upcoming event—and while Marpesia and Harmony were putting in time at the base with Iron Maiden on connecting the rest of the information we had gathered thus far—TupperWear, Red Serge, Toolshed and I were on stakeout at the Harrisons' home. Red Serge had taken on the mission with the Infra-Red goggles fixed in place, wanting to keep up with the opposite side of the attack. Which, I did have to admit, was probably a good call.

Despite the pleasant weather we were granted that evening, I couldn't help but feel that, in some way, the elements were stacking against us. The air seemed heavy, and not from humidity.

I started feeling kind of sick. If we were being tested, I was more than ready to learn what exactly the subject was. A test of our abilities? Seemed logical. But was Damien going for logical, or not?

And forget just Damien. Scott Tenorman was nowhere to be found. He had not reared his head yet. The answer seemed pretty obvious, though: find the location of the Carnival, find Scott.

Who was playing who, here, though? Did that Carnival actually exist or not?

"Good to go, Kite?" I heard Red Serge ask through the wire, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Huh? Yeah. I'm in position," I said. "You guys?"

The other three responded in the affirmative, and thus began the waiting game. Which just perpetuated my unease.

"What could they possibly want with any of the Harrisons, anyway?" I wondered.

"They're targets," Toolshed reminded me. "If they're going after everyone with a red-haired _parent…_"

"I know, but, even going after the nicest family in town…" I grumbled.

"Well, we are kinda dealing with a devil, here."

I felt a shiver run down my spine. "We sure are."

I thought about the letter Harmony had found, and wondered again what on Earth that 'price' could have been, and whether or not Red or I would be dealt more letters of our own, soon, too. Plus, I thought, what about Angel? Damien couldn't have been her biggest fan, that was for sure, and after what had happened to Mysterion…

No. No, Kite, thoughts on the present. We were here to keep shit from getting out of hand.

Red Serge had taken the South of the house, while Toolshed stayed West and TupperWear staked out at the East; I, as was my general routine, took the roof. But I had to give the idea a shot. I'd been able to get a weird, buzzing 'reading' from the many clones at Park County… maybe the guys we'd be up against tonight would come off as readable, as well.

To pass the time, I decided to keep my mind going. Constant practice was the best kind, after all. There was plenty of fodder up there on the roof: pinecones, a couple of shiny objects dropped by unmindful birds, a hammer probably forgotten after a day of shingle repair. I wasn't exactly out of sight, up there on the roof, but I stayed out of the moonlight as best I could as I exercised my mind with the simple task of lifting those few objects from the simple, peaked roof; I raised and lowered the objects, then brought up a couple of the pinecones to spin about a foot in front of my face.

I liked having that _solid justification _of circles, now; God, it was helpful. It was nice and simple… like an orbit. I'd felt that before, but somehow, that chart from Henrietta's book had been the last thing I'd needed to really kick myself into accepting that gravity rearrangement was as natural as true gravity itself. A shift in orbit…

Was it a shift we were needing to watch out for? Flicking my fingers back and forth, I got the pinecones to spin faster, and studied the movement. How many different pocket dimensions existed around Earth? How many did Damien know about? All of them? Probably. I didn't exactly want to think about how we could even go about finding places rumored only to exist in dreams.

I thrust my hand forward, shooting the pinecones off into the trees past the house. Shadows fell around me; the lights had gone out inside. Any minute now.

…And that was when I felt it.

My head started to ache and buzz as if being shocked by a direct current of electricity. I winced, but shook myself of it quickly, steadying myself on the roof. Once I was confident that I was secure, I closed my eyes, and focused on what I could feel around me. Each individual shingle of the roof—unimportant, but all alike in quality. Good to know. The weight of my own glider, and the familiar sense of objects much closer to the ground: Toolshed's sledgehammer, for one; TupperWear's vehicle, for another, both for their separate reasons.

But ten very distinct readings. They caused an awful ache in my head, bordering us on all sides, but they read as I could remember boulders had. I was reading heavy objects. Moving, but not sentient.

Shit.

I really could read them. Because they weren't alive. They weren't really anything. Right?

"Heads up," I managed to say to the others, keeping my tone low.

"What?" TupperWear wondered. "I don't see anything."

"Neither do I," I confessed. "But they're here." I held my breath, and opened my eyes. Still using caution, I inched toward the front of the roof.

"How many?" TupperWear asked.

"Ten," I answered, simultaneously with the youngest on the field. "Red Serge…?"

"They're showing up on the goggles," he explained. "It says there's eleven responses. Guess I'm the eleventh. Surprise."

"Be careful," I instructed him. I could pretty much guarantee that got him either eye-rolling or mentally judging me, but I didn't care. I'd always look out for my little brother, no matter how much he'd grow up and into his own varied responsibilities. "Let's try to drive these Infras back, guys. They're not here to drop a letter. This is a raid."

"Got it," said Toolshed. "I've got one approaching. Here we go."

Indeed, hardly a minute after I'd identified that the targets were approaching, they came into view. That was the best way for me to think of them, too: as _targets._ Same as the stands we had set up on the training field at the base. The only difference was that these could move, though they lacked free will. It was still disturbing, though, that they could hold conversation and appear like anyone else in the world with their own conscious thoughts.

I shook my head and focused. Three on Toolshed's end, three on TupperWear's, two for Red Serge. Two directly ahead. Dressed in their usual blacks, the Infra-Reds advanced, the ones in my direct line of sight appearing from behind the home across the street.

"Interesting," Red Serge commented.

"What?" I wondered.

"Goggles just flashed the word, _'Showtime.'"_

I snorted. _"Really?"_

"So let's give 'em a show," said TupperWear. I glanced over the roof to where he'd been stationed, to find that he was already locked in a fight. I knew he and Toolshed both were capable of taking on at least three targets at a time; I wasn't worried.

I focused my attention on the two approaching from the front. Quickly but silently, I unraveled a length of my emulsified string and tied a lasso. After unraveling a few yards more, I swung the lasso a couple times in the air to gain momentum, then hurled the loop down to the ground, catching one man precisely around the neck.

My heart started pounding as I started obsessing over the moral implications of what I was about to do, but—no… no, they weren't real. I could read them. They weren't real.

What about the people they were copied from, though? Shit—if I did this, what would happen to them?

…Assuming they were still alive.

Fuck. No time to think. I yanked on the string, and the man's neck snapped. I swear I could feel it, up through the string, which I kept a firm grip on.

Until the body burst into flames.

Snapping the man's neck was akin to yanking the pin from a grenade. I could barely even see the attack itself happen, since the body ignited so fast. What appeared to be flesh exploded into ash and char; I could smell sulfur on the air, and realized that the flames were snaking quickly up the string I'd used to catch my target. If I dropped it now, the house might catch fire, so I quickly spun out one of my knives, clipped the string, and locked onto what little solid material there was left of it in order to toss it with a quick thought down to the ground.

From the sound of things, the others were holding up just fine, but all I could do was stare, completely disregarding the man still approaching the house. The other body had now completely disintigrated, leaving a pile of black dust.

What happened then was enough to make me forget how to breathe. Out of the pile rose a large pillar of black smoke, which twisted about as if groping for something to hold onto. I could nearly make out the semblance of eyes in the twisting smoke, as well, as it formed itself into a shape nearly like a man's, before it then contorted into a little, angular thing not unlike a disembodied shadow.

Oh fucking great.

"Well," I alerted the others once I found my voice again, "these things are definitely not people."

"The hell's going on?" I heard Mysterion ask over the wire, his tone frantic.

"Exactly," I said, still in shock. "I just—k-kinda killed one."

"What do you mean _kinda?"_

"What do you mean _killed?"_ the Guardian Angel added.

"If you deal a fatal blow to these guys, they explode," I said, barely even believing what I was saying, despite having seen it only seconds ago with my own eyes. "Heads up, though: they're like… like vessels. The guy I got went up in flames and a shadowy thing flew outta the ashes."

"Son of a _bitch,"_ Mysterion growled. "Thanks for the heads-up."

"You okay?" I wondered.

"Technically no, but I'll deal. Get back to it, Kite, we'll catch up on this shit soon."

We ended the transmission, and without a second thought, I took the opportunity to glide to the ground, where the second 'man' immediately took a swing at me. I ducked under his right hook and punched him in the gut. He did not react. It still disturbed me that these—_things,_ I guess—did not react to damage, but at least now I knew why.

He doubled back, and I spun out my butterfly knife again in hopes of getting one more of our opponents out of the way. He caught my wrist before I could make another move, though, and quickly spun me around so that my arm was pinned behind my back. Which, angled against my glider, was not the most comfortable position for me.

The man wrestled the knife from me, and I heard him snap it around. If I pulled in any direction, I realized, I'd be in danger of breaking my own arm, such was the grip the guy had on me. If Harmony were still actually a _healer,_ as Butters had been four years ago in R'lyeh, I'd've done it and dealt with the rest of the fight one-handed, but I didn't exactly have the time right now for a real break to set.

I hardly had to think about that, though, since the next thing I knew, Red Serge was at my side, saying, "In about five seconds, run."

I was able to crane my neck just enough to see him draw his sword and jab it straight through the soulless man's gut. He let go without a sound, and the moment I was free, I spun and shielded Red Serge, keeping my back to the conflagration that burst up once the target reacted to having been stabbed.

"I said run!" Red Serge reprimanded me.

"Right now, say thanks," I panted. "You would've caught fire!"

"I would've moved," he mumbled, as I stepped back so that the two of us could observe the same shadow phenomenon the first man had exhibited upon burning to cinders. "But thanks."

"Same to you," I said, patting him on the shoulder. "You do well on the field."

That got a bit of a grin out of him, and his real tone came through with a more sincere, "I appreciate that, buddy."

"No prob. Now, you picking up anything on those goggles about that shadow thing?"

The angular, disembodied shadow that spat out of the second pile of ashes took to the air, only to fall a second later, and then seep away into the ground. Red Serge shook his head. "Just that the number went down to nine—eight."

I heard an explosion coming from Toolshed's section of the outer yard, and Red Serge and I took off in that direction. Luckily, it had been a projectile attack on Toolshed's part. "Toolshed!" I called out as we drew closer.

"These fuckers seriously explode!" he yelped in shock, his eyes wide behind his tinted safety goggles. He re-loaded the drill gun he'd been holding, the cause of the most recent 'death' of one of the Infra-Reds, and took a panicked look around. "Dude, weren't you guys covering front and back?"

"My guys split," said Red Serge. "I almost got one, but then—" An explosion from the other side of the house, and Red Serge lifted one hand in demonstration. "Seven." Explosion. "Six."

"Way to go, TupperWear," Toolshed grinned.

The two remaining Infras from the west side of he house were alert and on us, so we'd have to save the celebrating for later. Toolshed fired a couple of times at one, but he dodged the drill bits and darted toward Red Serge, making a grab for the goggles. Red Serge punched the man down, but the second managed to get closer. Thinking fast, I unraveled a length of string, rushed in behind the man, and managed to loop the string around him in order to yank him back away from Red Serge before the goggles could get back in the hands of the GSM.

The man Red Serge had gotten down was back up on his feet; it became instantly clear that reclaiming the goggles was turning into a more primary objective for these guys, as they were targeting him rather than advancing nearer to the house. I noticed the gun that the man drew at the same time Toolshed did. "I don't think so!" I shouted, yanking back on my current target again.

But he kicked back at me—the heel of his boot smacked into my shin, and I grit my teeth to keep from reacting too strongly to the sudden sting, I did let out a little too much slack on my hold, unfortunately, which got the man wrestling free and spinning to throw a punch. I grabbed his fist, and he got in a good jab to my ribs before I took out my second knife with my free—albeit non-dominant—hand in order to get in a slash across my opponent's face.

As I did, I noticed in my peripheral vision that Toolshed had switched out his drill gun for his sledgehammer, which he brought down onto the second man who'd drawn a pistol against Red Serge, thus knocking him unconscious. If these people were ever truly conscious at all.

The slash I'd made across my own target's face did a little surface damage, but I'd slit the hold on his goggles, causing them to slide off and give me a glimpse of his face. The Ginger man had the same exact pattern of freckles that those sitting in Park County did: under each eye, and on the forehead. That didn't concern me quite as much, though, as the fact that I hadn't drawn blood.

I found myself contemplating morals and logic again as the small cut I'd gotten in on the man's face began to spread, and a bit of that smoke-like shadow leaked out in place of blood. I took a couple of steps back, and my target, utterly un-concerned about the damage done to him, pulled a gun from a holster on his thigh and aimed for my head.

Thank God for quick reflexes. I felt that familiar buzz in my right temple as I thrust my right hand out to lift the gun from my opponent's hand and thrust it aside. He glanced in the direction I'd hurled it, just in time for Toolshed to swing his sledgehammer right into the man's face, hitting the cut I'd already carved in.

The blow from the sledgehammer caused the cut to open further, and more of the smoke began to billow out as the man dropped to the ground. This was worse to watch than the conflagrations: he began slowly burning up, from the cut to the rest of his head, down to his neck and shoulders, and lower from there. The worst of it was, I couldn't look away. A being who'd appeared so real a moment before had just been singed into charcoal, and released that strangely-animate charm, or what have you, that had been keeping the fake body moving.

"What the hell are those shadowy things?" Toolshed wondered aloud.

"I dunno," I said, "but we'd better get to TupperWear and just finish this up. I'm gonna get sick if I do nothing but think about this."

"No kidding. Red Serge, what's the call?" Toolshed asked.

Red Serge glanced down at the man who was still merely unconscious. He unclipped a set of handcuffs from his utility belt, and decided, "I'm gonna try to get this guy to talk once he comes to. You guys, go."

"You're good?" I checked again.

Red Serge nodded, and tightened the cuffs around the man's wrists. "Hurry up, there's still three more."

With no further hesitation, Toolshed and I ran, I round the front and he around back, to the other side of the house, where TupperWear was up against two of the remaining three. He hurled one of his discs at one, and the man dodged. "Kite," Toolshed said to get my attention, nodding at the disc as he rushed forward to help TupperWear dispose of the other opponent, the sole female on the mission.

"Got it," I said, having the same thought myself.

Before I could lose sight of TupperWear's weapon, I stopped its path mid-air, cautioned, "Incoming!" and hurled the sharp circular object back at its intended target. It cut into the man's shoulder, but prompted nothing enough to make the body disintigrate.

"What's even going on with these guys?" TupperWear wondered.

"Like I said, man, not human," I repeated.

"Are we even—like, it's not technically a kill if we get these guys, right?"

My stomach flipped. "Yeah, I'm trying not to think about that," I admitted.

"Here's hoping," said Toolshed, pulling out one of his drill guns and firing twice at the woman. At the same time, TupperWear cautioned me to duck, and as soon as I did, he hurled another disc at the recovered man. The three of us then held our breath as both targets went up in flames.

They were so easy to get rid of. Was that in Damien's plan, or was this all still part of his set-up for this being some kind of sick warm-up game? "Ugh," I groaned, my senses already bored of the constant smell of charcoal and smoke. "No, really, this is making me sick."

"Yeah, I'm kinda really not okay with this, either," said Toolshed.

"I get the whole cloning thing," TupperWear pointed out, "I mean, it gives them a bigger army, but if they go down so easy…?"

"The fuck kind of test is this?" I complained.

On one hand, though, we could pretty easily rule out the supposition that these men and women were figures of wax. Much more likely, they were made from the very terrain of Hell, and given false life by something within Damien's command. Which in turn got me wondering how readily available Damien's resources were.

…And how he'd traveled here in the first place. Given, there was a direct link, according to Henrietta's chart, between Earth and Hell, but where did the remaining Spaces Between factor in…? Mysterion had once been able to travel through them; seemed like something that could be up there in a devil's skill set.

Another explosion from where Red Serge was still stationed got my pulse rushing, and before I could even suggest that we make a move, the hero himself sprinted our way. As he caught his breath, he said, "He fucking did it himself."

"What?" TupperWear asked, concerned.

"The guy—I had a guy in cuffs, and I got to questioning him, but I swear to God, guys, he took himself out, rather than talk to me."

"What the _actual fuck?"_ I complained.

"Was he the last one, though?" asked Toolshed. "I can't remember…"

"No, there's still—"

"Good evening." Well, that answered that.

The final member of the failed GSM raid stood before us, his arms defiantly folded as if to show us that he had no intention of fighting. Or no requirement to do so, at the very least. Intention was tough to gauge on these men and women, since I had to doubt that they had 'thoughts' necessarily: just orders, coming from the goggles they wore. Goggles, and simple fight-or-flight responses. That was all.

I refused to believe that I or my teammates had killed anyone that night. The thought alone was giving me an awful headache, and I didn't want to stick around much longer to see if it would get any worse. I could already tell I was going to be losing sleep over this, if not start to have some pretty fucked-up dreams myself.

"What was the point of any of this?" Toolshed demanded of the remaining man. "Were you here to collect, or were you proving some kind of point?"

"We take what we can gather," was the answer. But the man didn't focus on Toolshed when he spoke the words: he was looking at me. "It is our duty to appease Charon's apprentice, and his to appease the management."

At first, I could have sworn the man said _Karen,_ but a quick thought back to a couple of English courses I'd taken recently allowed me to correct myself.

"The management," I repeated. "You mean Damien?"

The man took a surveying look over the four of us, and then at the house. He then touched the index and middle fingers of his right hand to the switch on the side of his goggles, and said, "Mission at checkpoint. Shall I proceed?"

A great breeze rose up around us, and I heard the familiar cutting of blades through air as the decal-emblazoned helicopter I recognized from the first attack appeared overhead. A rope ladder was rolled down from the door, and our final opponent stepped up to it to begin his climb. "Get back here!" I snapped, making a move to charge up after him.

Red Serge grabbed my shoulder and hissed into my ear, "There's more on board, Kite, that thing's army-grade."

"So we storm it!" I insisted.

"As much as I'd like to, we'd be at a bad disadvantage."

"I'm sick of this one step forward, two steps back shit," I said, "we need to get on board."

"Be my guest," the man in his uniform blacks called down to me from the ladder. "You've been given clearance, Human Kite. We are willing to waive your payment, though a price will of course be expected of your… less-able companions."

Fuck. That got me to stand down.

Feigning a disappointed shrug, the man finished his climb, and the helicopter rose a few hundred feet further into the air, then took off.

I really was sick of being forced to piece things together little by little. It was going to take more than just the disappearance of our opponents for the evening, too, to convince me that the raid on the Harrisons was complete. There was no way the GSM had chosen that as their target for the evening _just because._ No, Damien wanted something out of them—compliance of the siblings or whatever else he could possibly stand to gain—and we'd be at a loss until we figured out exactly what.

While Red Serge and I circled the house and the nearby grounds to see if we could pick up on any other Movement activity, TupperWear set up security cameras and checked in with Iron Maiden, so we could have a feed of the house from the base at all times. Toolshed, meanwhile, stepped in to make a courtesy call on the Harrisons, and brief them on what had happened.

The piles of ash left behind by the Infra-Reds we'd disposed of were in turn beginning to break down and become nothing. Nothing, and no one, else stirred in the streets, buildings or trees around the house that could be considered a threat; once Red Serge and I were in agreement on that fact, we doubled back just in time to catch the tail end of Toolshed's conversation with Gary Harrison:

"Gosh," the Mormon was saying, "I know strange things happen in this town, but this is just downright… well, I can't even think of a word for it!"

"We're going to have your house secured," Toolshed reassured him; at that point, I noticed that Amanda was standing just a hair behind her brother in the doorway, and Toolshed's placating was mostly for her benefit. "You know how to contact me in case anything comes up."

Gary nodded tersely. "I keep this town in my prayers as it is," he said, "but I'll say a few extra words from now on." Showing a little smile, he added, "You've already got one Angel on your side."

"That we do. But we'll take all the help we can get."

"But you're the Shadow League," Amanda added. The youngest of the Harrison siblings, and still a good friend to Karen, Amanda Harrison had just completed eighth grade, and had put a lot of faith in the League through the years, beginning with the Guardian Angel's first few missions in Salt Lake City, and perpetuating with the work that Mysterion and the rest of us were able to do. "You can stop these people. You've done it before, and you can do it again!"

The encouragement was nice to hear, even if my head was still overflowing with too much information as I tried to work around the odd logic behind whatever these 'people' who made up the current GSM were truly all about. We took our leave after exchanging a few additional words of support, but the further from the property we moved, the more I replayed the events of the evening in my mind.

I'd seen those Infra-Reds burst into cinders. I'd seen those seemingly sentient bursts of smoke and shadow. Mysterion was going to have a field day. And I was starting to itch with the want to see Damien myself, if only to throw a few punches and demand some answers. Maybe I wouldn't get any, but it'd sure feel great to try.

– – –

"Thought so!" Stan announced.

We'd showered and changed back at the base, then left the mission wrap-up in Red Serge and TupperWear's hands while Stan and I returned to his house in the interest of digging out a couple of texts from a class we'd taken together the previous semester. It had been a course on archetypes and epic poetry, so our texts had included the works of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, all three of whom had, Stan had recalled while we'd still been at the base, made reference to the mythic Charon.

I was seated at the foot of Stan's bed, a bottle of water balanced between my knees and an ice pack nearby to nurse the headache that inevitably followed the mission. I was massaging the side of my head and trying not to get my fingernails caught in the drying mess of curls that made up my far-too-thick hair, and glanced up when Stan held open the copy of the illustrated Dante text we'd been forced to buy for way too much money (rules of college at their finest) just earlier that year. Too bad that was the text we'd spent the least amount of time covering. Guess now was as good a time as any to make up for that.

"Charon," Stan said, tapping the illustration. It showed a withered old man in tattered clothes, leaning against an oar, and perched in a rickety-looking plank of a boat, the bow of which was adorned with a single lantern. According to ancient mythologies, Charon, also a common figure for both use and debate in the Renaissance, was said to be the man who ferried souls across a river known as Acheron into Limbo.

Now, maybe it was the fact that I had only kind of half paid attention in that class, but I was under the assumption that Limbo and Purgatory were more or less the same thing. Then again, I'd have to say that Kenny would be the one to give the real yes or no on that… and I had to admit that Stan would be a pretty reliable voice on the topic, as well.

"Does it say anything about an apprentice?" I wondered.

Stan glanced at the book again, then walked over to sit beside me so that both of us could have the same view of the book. "That's what the guy said, right?" I nodded. Stan leafed through the text, and said, "I dunno, dude, I don't see anything."

"Well, flipping through, of course not," I pointed out. "Go back to that one chapter, what's that one chapter?"

Stan obliged to my request, and went back to the illustration of Charon, and then to the start of the chapter—or, Canto, as it were—he appeared in. I noticed the words, _"the Way into the City of Woe,"_ and was about to read them aloud in order to make my own remarks on how we'd probably touched upon something pretty big—

Before I could, though, Stan's clock radio crackled on, and the faint, skipping sound of Radiohead's _I Am Citizen Insane_ could be heard underneath the familiar voice:

"Welcome to a special broadcast of Red Radio."

"Shit," Stan muttered under his breath.

"He does realize he's making them sound like a bunch of Communists…?" I said, attempting to calm my nerves with a little sarcasm. Stan shushed me. I leaned against him to close a small distance, and we both stared at the radio, as if waiting for it, too, to shoot out a pillar of shadows in the way Kenny's letter had.

"As a winning prize to those of you who have chosen to tune in," the voice we knew was Damien's continued, "I have a very special announcement. Our Carnival's construction is nearing completion, but we cannot move forward without a little more help from a select few. That is why we shall be finalizing our recruitment effort on the sixth of June."

Stan grabbed my hand. "The gallery," we stated together.

"Moving forward from this date, expect to see some wonderful changes to this little town as the Carnival moves apace. Save your coins, citizens, for our doors will soon be open to anyone willing to pay our incredibly reasonable entrance fee. And if I need further convince you, our dear, dear listeners, the main attractions shall be, I promise you, a taste of what you can only dream of."

The radio cut out; a headache crept up on me and the lights flickered. Stan nudged my arm, and I took his hint and downed a few sips of water to stay controlled. Once I had, we glanced back down at the poem that began the Canto:

_"I am the Way to a Forsaken People/ I am the Way into Eternal Sorrow…"_

I thought again about Henrietta's chart. Lines connected one sphere to the next, and a river, according to this text, connected Limbo to Hell. Damn good thing we had the Goths' event coming up, and even better that they were (however unenthusiastically) willing to help us out.

True, earlier I had been afraid we'd been forced to take a few steps back, but now that we had another text to scour, I was beginning to feel more positive. A month still seemed like a short amount of time in which we could do our work, but the faster the Carnival moved, well, then, the better we needed to stay ahead. Especially now that it seemed clear that the actual souls of the people that were being cloned for the GSM army were probably in very real danger of being the next group on that ferry to Hell.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Scratching the surface of Dante with this chapter; more to come next week~ Because next week: the gallery! This was another lengthy chapter, but we're now ready to move things forward and start making connections between our source texts. ^^

As a heads-up on posting, though, after next week, we _might_ be switching to an every other week schedule, since we've both found ourselves in tight schedules lately… but the fun stuff is all going to start coming in next week so we shall see! The next few chapters are the ones I've been really looking forward to writing (and that we have a lot of already written). The guys have done their research… time to start getting into where it leads them. :3

Thank you so much for reading! We'll see you next **Wednesday, August 8****th****!** :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn~

– – –


	8. Ep 8: Dream and Let Die

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

– – –

_Come hither, my lads, with your tankards of ale,_

_And drink to the present before it shall fail;_

_Pile each on your platter a mountain of beef,_

_For 'tis eating and drinking that bring us relief:_

_So fill up your glass,_

_For life will soon pass;_

_When you're dead, ye'll ne'er drink to your king or your lass!_

––H.P. Lovecraft, _The Tomb_

– – –

_Kenny_

The book hit the table with a declarative _thud,_ sending up a small cloud of dust, primarily from its own yellowing pages. It was hard-bound, musty, and, despite being at least ninety years old, a very familiar shade of red. It was echoed in the two large rooms below us, in the space being primed for a grand reveal to a selected audience.

I stared at the cover of the book, and cursed my own neglect of a notion that had struck me several days before. Dante Alighieri's _The Inferno._

Another copy was then presented, this one newer, sturdier, and bearing a smoky grey binding. I felt an itch in my spine as my shadow tugged on my limbs, attempting to entice me to action. I held firm.

The final pieces were then presented: the _Dhol Chants_ first, by the multi-ringed fingers of our own great Goth liaison, and Wilcox's collected works next, by a curiously stern-faced Stan Marsh, who had insisted upon making this particular call with me, even before I could offer to bring him along.

Henrietta stared down at the four volumes on the table, her eyes hidden under her thick lashes, unblinking as they studied each discovery, from cover to prophetic cover. "Where did you say this Damien guy was from again?" she wondered.

"Seventh layer of Hell," I recalled.

"That's what I remember him saying," Stan confirmed. Not that any of us had quite cared, back in third grade. If ever there were a time for Captain Hindsight…

"Circle," Henrietta corrected us both.

"What?" I asked.

"The Seventh _Circle._ You could call them layers, sure, but in here," Henrietta tapped the cover of her old copy of _Inferno,_ "they're called _Circles,_ and that's the way the universe accepts it."

"What d'you mean, accepts?" Stan wondered.

Henrietta opened up to the chart in the _Dhol Chants,_ and traced the large outer circle with her quellazaire. As she did, I passed my gaze over the numerous lines connecting one plane of existence to another. On a blink up, I saw that Stan was doing the same thing. "Universe operates on circles, and rejects unnecessary mass," Henrietta explained. "Black holes open up in space where a circle's been rejected." Jesus Christ, Kyle would love this shit. He should have come with; how dare he be working. I mean, I was getting it, but Kyle could analyze the _fuck_ out of what Henrietta was telling us. Stan was soaking it in enough, though… that was good.

"So…" Stan leaned up against the low-to-the-ground coffee table that the three of us sat around, propping his head up in his hands, with his elbows placed on either side of his grey, illustrated school textbook copy of _The Inferno._ He drummed his fingers against his jawbone and gnawed at his lower lip. I saw his eyes lift to Henrietta's cigarette as she put the quellazaire again to her lips. The guy didn't smoke _much;_ this was a situation that might get him going again, though. I wondered when he'd cave. I was almost there myself.

"What?" Henrietta prompted him, having no patience for waiting.

"Just—so, you said black holes. Does this mean, like, the Spaces Between are like black holes, just… on Earth?"

"I'd buy that," I said. I leaned over the table and, careful not to actually touch the page of the tome itself, pointed out the various lines on the chart. My shadow had a different idea, and began to form its own circle around the illustration. _Fuck you,_ I thought, wishing I could send the message straight to Damien. "The Spaces Between," I said, and I half expected to hear the Shadow whisper a laugh, "don't fit into the circles you were talking about, and they don't fit into Heaven or Hell."

"Right. They're pocket dimensions." Henrietta let smoke ease up from the corner of her slightly-pouted lower lip. It hid her expression for a moment, but I was glad, once the smoke cleared, to see her more or less in agreement with Stan's thought.

"And you can somehow reach them in dreams," Stan pointed out.

"Exactly. But it's not unheard of to get there awake, too. Especially if you know what they look like." I thought back to my previous meeting with her—she had mentioned a lamp, belonging to the madman who had written the _Necronomicon. _"You guys have been to Purgatory," she noted.

Stan paled, and moved to lean back, shoving his hands now under the large velvet pillow he was using as a coffee table seat. I nodded.

"Purgatory's got rules and circles. Heaven's got rules and circles. Hell…" Henrietta scowled at _The Inferno._ "I really shoulda figured."

"What?" I had to know.

"Nothing. I didn't want to name this stupid place 'Tenth Circle,' but those two did," Henrietta muttered, casting a truly bone-chilling leer back in the direction of the Goths' bedrooms. "They're gonna fucking get it."

"Why?"

"Stop asking stupid questions. Anyway," said Henrietta, "you guys should probably start writing down any feelings of déjà vu you might be getting from your dreams."

"Yeah…?" Stan said, nervously. "We're not—not seriously going to have to go through that again, are we?"

"No. It's just that you two have a jumping off point the other guys don't. You've both seen Purgatory and R'lyeh, and traveled through pocket dimensions. You," she added, nodding to me, "have seen Heaven and Hell. Devil boy seems to know what he's after, even if we don't."

"Things gonna get crazy again?" I wondered, praying we wouldn't have to deal with the kind of arcane madness Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep had brought forth before.

"I'm not sure. Thing is, there's always going to be disorder. Harmony demands Chaos."

That was about as far as we went, that evening, but the words rang with me for the rest of our few days' wait until the event. Sure, R'lyeh had been the capitol city of chaos if ever there was one. I did worry, though, about just how much things might come back to haunt us.

If my Shadow was a warning, and we were being called out in such personal ways…

Fuck. I didn't want to think about chaos now.

Focus. Primary goal: focus. Get Wilcox to talk, and draw lines from spaces to Hell's circles before we'd have too much disorder on our hands.

– – –

We talked about it for a while, and ultimately decided that in order to do this operation right, we needed to split the team into three, and rope in a fair deal of help from our honorary members as well. This was a new kind of mission for us.

Oh, we'd had more than enough experience spying and gathering information for cases during our daily routines, but none of us had ever gone undercover for the League before. Not like this.

Yes, it was a risk. It had been decided that six of us would be attending the gallery event: wired, wearing under-armor, and packing concealed weapons. 'Covert' really was the name of this particular game, and we needed to play it right. So I put it forward to the group as a volunteer opportunity at first, allowing there to be, primarily, the option to say 'no.' I divided the board into three sections: _BASE, INSIDE _and_ OUTSIDE._

Cartman and Craig were both of the _no fucking way_ frame of mind when asked if they wanted to attend the actual event, so they were the first two names under the _OUTSIDE_ bracket. "'Sides," Cartman added haughtily, "Coon's gotta be ready in case that fucking asshole Scott Tenorman shows up."

"Or Damien," I noted. "We've all gotta be ready for him."

I glanced at Craig, who more or less got my drift: _keep an eye on the Coon._ None of us had to say it, but we all knew that Cartman had to be under heavy watch. Just in case. We never knew what to expect with him, and he still had not returned to confront his mother regarding the Damien issue.

Under _BASE,_ the two usual names went upon their own request: Red Serge and Iron Maiden.

Token offered to leave a second unmarked car parked near the base so that Red Serge could get into town fast if need be. Kyle protested for a moment, pointing out that Ike was only fifteen. "You really think I haven't driven for missions when you guys aren't around?" Ike was quick to mention to his concerned brother. "Really?"

"You're fifteen."

"I also carry a sword. Which one d'you think woulda gotten me arrested by now, buddy?"

Kyle relented, leaning back in his chair. "Good point, I guess."

It was inevitable that I'd be going in. Kenny McCormick, not Mysterion, was going to be present at the event. It was the best way I'd be able to catch Wilcox in conversation. I needed to talk to him, pick his brain. The only way I could do that would be if we found ourselves in a situation during which he _had_ to talk.

Once I'd announced that, Red, present at the meeting at which we started to prepare ourselves for the event, sprang to her feet, took the marker from my hand, and wrote her name down beside mine on the _INSIDE_ section of the whiteboard. When I tried to protest, my girlfriend simply stared me down, and said, "You think I don't want to scope things out myself? I'm going with you."

I gave in, despite my own trepidations about the idea. But, hey, again, we had to do this right: a date was the perfect pretense for us heading in, and honestly, I had no other reason to be attending an event like that. The closest I got to art was my building painting jobs; Red, on the other hand, was in the fashion arts. She'd not only be someone expected to show up, but able to help me look the part, as well.

Karen, then, insisted upon leading the outside team. If Mysterion was going to be absent, the Guardian Angel, she argued, needed to be present. When she volunteered, she gave me an encouraging, uplifting smile. Thank God I could count on my sister.

Clyde was next to volunteer to be on the inside, since Bebe, too, was present, and the two decided to go with the same pretense as me and Red. I liked the idea, as well, since if anything came up that would require Red needing to leave (probably at my own request for fear of the GSM coming against her), it would be good to have Bebe around to bring her safely back to the base; we wouldn't lose anyone on the field that way.

While I kept thinking that Token and Wendy would also have looked the part a little more to be inside, I was not surprised or disappointed at all that the two of them, along with Butters, volunteered to be on Karen's team. They were the best guards we had, after all, and a good offense-defense team. Plus, I still had no idea how they were doing on a personal level—can't fake a date if the spark's gone, I guess.

That put Stan and Kyle as the last two we'd have on the inside. Once I brought that up, Kyle admitted, looking a little ashamed, that he'd kind of been waiting for the last minute on that, so that he wouldn't be able to talk himself around not being inside and around those paintings. But when I thought about it: yeah, I did want them inside, if they were the ones more disturbed by what we'd seen of Wilcox's work than anyone. They'd started the work, and I needed them to be able to continue with it.

Plus, Kyle added, if he was there, Red wouldn't be the only redheaded target, and he'd be able to take on opposition easier than my girlfriend could. Stan, meanwhile, was of a like mind with me: he was the one experiencing dream issues. It was better for him to be there than Toolshed.

We took a break once the assignments had been passed out, and Bebe immediately flew over to Red, hugging her and exclaiming, "Ohmigod, we totally get to be like _Bond_ girls for a night!"

"Now that you mention it…" Red laughed.

"Am I Sean Connery _Bond_ or, like, Pierce Brosnan _Bond?"_ Clyde wanted to know.

"I liked Daniel Craig," Bebe grinned. "But we'll see how you do."

Red got right to work, while we were taking the time to break, drafting—with Wendy overseeing—ideas for how best Clyde, Stan, Kyle and I would be able to go in with concealed weapons… and exactly how she and Bebe might have to stay armed as well.

We had had our setbacks on League missions before. This, we all swore, was not going to be one of them. For this, we were over-preparing, and all the while Karen and I continued stressing that there was no such thing as being too ready.

This was Hell and, quite possibly, our own subconscious dreams we were dealing with, here. We ended the meeting after a few hours of passing around possible ways that the evening could throw curve balls at us, making sure that we had a plan for anything and everything that Damien, Tenorman, or the amassed GSM might try to pull. If we didn't rule out anything as a possibility, nothing, we deduced, could surprise us, right? And even if it did, we'd have to treat it as just an occurrence.

Stay one step ahead. That was the general rule. Once that event was upon us, I was convinced (as were we all) that we'd have more of the information we'd been craving in order to infiltrate and work ourselves into control of the situation, rather than be ever so marginally behind. No, this time, we had it. We had eyes everywhere. Maybe Hell was at our heels, but fuck, we were not going to let it get the best of us.

– – –

The entire town was set to be alive with activity that night. Catching the art bug, a few other shops and galleries in town, Tweak Bros. included, had apparently decided to follow The Tenth Circle's lead in hosting events of their own. Which initially disturbed me, since I began to fear for attendees of the other events, but Red Serge and Iron Maiden put my fears at least marginally to rest by heading out on their own mission in the early hours of the morning, setting up security cameras with direct links both to the base and to Murphy's personal scanner.

I did not want to get the fucking cops involved. I trusted Murphy. I didn't trust Yates anymore, or the rest of the force. I advised Murphy to take the night off, since Yates would inevitably be around, and had him on direct call. In that regard, though, I needed to be careful, since there were six of us packing concealed weapons. We were endangering ourselves to be found out, but I believed we had enough combined experience to be able to handle a possibly revealing situation.

Red and Bebe, I figured, would be more or less safe. Karen had stories set up for Angel to tell the cops, about her 'looking out for citizens in danger,' that she had entrusted simple weapons to hand-selected certain people who had seen their way through tough events in the past. Those of us on spy recon for the evening certainly fit that bill—outside of League duties, we'd seen our fair share of odd happenings in South Park—so it was a good cover, if we needed it.

Have I yet written a boyfriend dissertation on why my girlfriend is amazing? Because here we go. The girl knows fashion… and I don't just mean she keeps up with trends and can match colors and can make suggestions for men and women and adults and kids and cross-dressers and you name it. Red can _fucking sew._ Make alterations that aren't glaring. Make concealed pockets and then get rid of them as if they were never there.

We donated what we could to help her out. Token dipped into the League funds and Red used the discount she got at her dress shop job (not only at her store, but at fabric places as well… and was able to use the excuse of summer homework and practice for the internship she wanted to call the purchases plausible) in order to buy some extra material she'd be using to make inner pockets and arm straps for us. Clyde got out the tux he'd bought for junior prom in high school, and while Red was adding length to the arms, the main part Clyde had outgrown since he was seventeen, she slipped in two loops.

Through those loops went a faux-leather strap that Red whipped up and Token and Wendy spring-loaded one of Mosquito's stunners. One on each wrist, Clyde could be armed in a second; the trigger for the spring was in his cuff links.

Kyle did not want to cave to using guns, so Red stitched strapped holsters that were fitted a little further up on his forearms, and loaded with switchblades. In a hidden pocket on both of his thighs, too, he strapped his butterfly knives. Yes, he and Clyde were a little at risk of being found out due to their choices in weapons, but Clyde's guns looked enough like regular pistols… and the butterfly knives were auxiliary for Kyle.

I mean, _okay,_ so I had a couple of Angel's smoke bombs on me, and though I debated my _shuriken,_ I ultimately went with a couple guns as well. Just plain old .45s for me, though. After all, if we could 'kill' these guys—and Kyle could tell us exactly which ones, thank God—then I didn't have to worry too much.

Stan was the hardest for us to figure out. He himself admitted that anything and everything in Toolshed's arsenal was a dead giveaway, and I could not risk him getting found out as part of the League. Clyde had extra stunners and shockers, though, and while the rest of us were working out other logistics, he took some time with Stan out on the field to teach him the basics of the highly specialized guns.

I was glad for that, too: two guys in there with weapons like Mosquito's would lead suspicion off a little. And besides, the Goths knew and didn't care or spread word, and any regular old patrons who'd be attending the event would probably clear out as soon as anything serious started happening. We were pretty much assuming that it would.

The girls each got switchblades as well, which they strapped under the skirts of their dresses. And here we go again, but Red—God bless her—can walk very fucking well in heels. Stilettos. Stilettos that she sharpened to points in order to use as weapons. Bebe, going a different route, decided to wear her hair up in a bit of a Greek style ("I have to honor Delphi somehow!" she'd said…) with sharpened decorative hairpins. Which got Clyde pretty excited, since the two were now more or less a team that could deliver a good sting.

Since Bebe and Red would each be carrying clutches, we stored extra ammo for the guns in those inner pockets. For throwing together a spy mission in just a few days, we felt like we were doing pretty well for ourselves.

And I was pretty damn glad to have Agent Harmony on the outside, too. Her talent for traps was, I had a feeling, going to come in handy.

I chose Craig—Endgame, still had to get used to that—and Marpesia to be the ones on first call to rush out if the GSM ended up attacking any of the other open venues. Then again, Token pointed out as we were preparing for our own event, it was possible that the more eyes, the less likely a widespread attack.

After all, Tenorman was mostly after Cartman, wasn't he? And while Damien did seem to want to spread the Carnival to the town, it seemed like he'd be riding this particular event at Tenth Circle, more than anything.

TupperWear, the Coon, and Marpesia left first, after we had stocked Token's van with the gear that Stan, Kyle, Clyde and I might very well need in order to make this a full League event. Clyde and Bebe were next to leave, in Bebe's Mini (allowing me and the guys a nice laugh at Clyde about that—no, really, no matter how dire a situation around me can get, _Clyde Donovan_ getting into a motherfucking _Mini Cooper_ will always be funny).

Endgame and Harmony were off next, and once they'd left base grounds, I huddled the five of us who had yet to leave together, along with the two who'd be sticking around, for a final check-in.

"Right," I said, "me and Clyde've already talked about this, but it's you two," I nodded to Stan and Kyle, "that I want really getting on those paintings. If it really gets shitty for either of you, Henrietta's got your backs, okay?"

Stan let out a sigh. "I am so glad she's being really cool about this," he said.

"Hell's too mainstream for her, remember?" I managed to laugh. "Tonight's all about piecing the rest of this Carnival together. You guys on the paintings, I've got Wilcox, and Clyde's gonna be on the lookout for Damien. Kyle, and Red, babe, sorry, but…"

Kyle shook his head. "I know," he said.

"It'll be all right, Kenny," Red tried to reassure me. "I'm not afraid of that stupid Movement."

"And, hey, at least we know what to look for in the fakes," Kyle added. "The Movement itself isn't the problem. We're there to catch the guys pulling the strings, and I'll be willing to talk to any of those cloned bastards in order to get us closer."

"Same here," Red offered.

"We'll be fine," Kyle finished. He glanced at Stan first when he said that, but gave me an extra little nod, which settled my swirling nerves a little.

Was I concerned for my girlfriend? Of fucking course I was. Did I think she could take care of herself? Hell yes. Was I going to be okay with that knowledge alone? No. And Kyle got that. I swear, I'll always be grateful for having such a close-knit team.

"The key for all of us," said the Guardian Angel, to put a cap on our conversation, "is to use discretion and to stay alert. We have the means to have the full team for backup, and we're all in contact Let's get moving. We're going to stop this nightmare before it can even start."

"I hear that," Stan said strongly. "I'm not all that big a fan of carnivals, anyway."

With that, Angel was off, Red Serge and Iron Maiden confirmed that they were recording, and Stan drove the rest of us down, opting to park his car in a public lot a fair enough distance from The Tenth Circle, just in case he'd be picking it up, oh, say, the following morning.

We entered through the usual door, but found the function to have changed around the interior somewhat. The odd assortment of tables and chairs had been pushed to the sides or in some cases taken away all together in the main room, and fully cleared in the large room to the left of the front door. An area of the floor had been sectioned off for a band—I recognized them a little; they'd played there before. Fucked if I could remember their name (or if they had one), but I was pretty sure the androgynous keyboardist either was currently or at the very least had previously dated the tallest of the Goths. The music choices were, naturally, of the ethereal Goth variety, and seemed to provide the perfect background for the unveiling of the rest of Wilcox's grotesque fever dreams on canvases.

Henrietta wasn't kidding about needing to dress formally for the gallery opening. Oh, she'd mentioned that she and the other two cared very, very little about what the patrons wore… it was in the hands of the guests, really. The crowd was made up almost entirely of those artsy types: women in long, either monochromatic or wildly multicolored dresses with big-ass costume jewelry; men in suits with awful but purportedly witty ties or cufflinks (or, shoot me, both). Dude, I paint buildings. I'm of a totally different crowd. So're my friends.

So _thank God_ we had Red and Bebe.

Especially since, when Red, Stan, Kyle and I arrived, Clyde was already well on his way to embarrassing himself, his fiancée, and just about everyone else around. He and Bebe were already in the adjunct room, where she was trying to take in a large painting of—_aha!—_a carousel horse, and where he was harassing the talent.

"Yo!" Clyde hollered to the bassist with his hands cupped over his mouth to assure that the sound traveled. "Lemmie hear _Smoke on the Water!"_

The surly rivethead with the matte black bass shot a scowl at him through the crowd, and I saw Bebe rush over to slap her fiancé on the shoulder for his misconduct. Clyde gave her an innocent shrug in return, then played a bit of air-bass (his hands in the wrong positions, but whatever, it was Clyde). "What?" he could be heard saying. "Dude, if I played bass, that'd be, like, the first thing I'd learn." He then sang out the well-known riff while strumming that air guitar: "Dun-dun-_daaaah, _dah-dah -_dah-daaahhhh…"_

"Oh, my God, I am never, ever bringing you to a nice function ever again," Bebe complained.

"That boy does need some culture," Kyle laughed, his eyes going skyward.

"Watch him just be totally holding out on us, and it turns out he's been secretly majoring in Art History this whole time," I added.

"Well, he's certainly not a Music major. He's got the fingering wrong," Stan snickered.

"On an _air guitar?"_ I chastised him.

Stan shrugged, and Kyle shook his head. "Come on," he urged, patting his boyfriend on the back to get him moving, "let's go save Bebe from that. Kenny, man," he added, locking eye contact with me for a couple seconds, "good luck. We'll keep our eyes out and ears open."

"That's the plan," I confirmed. "Thanks, guys."

As Red took hold of my hand, the four of us exchanged a little nod, and we went our separate ways. Sure, we'd only just arrived, but it was already clear that we were about the only locals in attendance. Maybe just from South Park… maybe just from this fucking dimension. Tough to tell. I mean, I wouldn't have put it past some of my friends' parents—Token's especially, or maybe Stan's mom—to show up just for fun, but for now, no faces were recognizable.

Meaning that we could go more or less unrecognized.

Unricognized-_ish,_ anyway. As Stan and Kyle walked on through the gathering crowd, I noticed that Kyle was turning some heads… several of which were red as his own. But I also caught the freckle pattern on a few others besides: either relatives, I assumed, or Gingers in wigs. Their pride was such, though, that I'd doubt the wigs a while, until I was proven wrong.

While Clyde was being pulled out of his lapse into idiocy (we all had our moments… we just couldn't afford to tonight), I myself practiced keeping my shoulders squared and my steps meaningful. Red wore heels on occasion, so she was much more practiced for formal settings than I was. She'd never tacked on as much height when wearing heels as she did that evening, but still, she was a pro. Needless to say, I was a little distracted. Just like Clyde and Bebe—Stan and Kyle, too, come to think of it—my girlfriend and I had been at a recent loss for opportunities in the 'night on the town' area of dating, and a good part of me wished I could just enjoy the night with her. Treat her royally, show her a wonderful time, and cap it all off once I took her home where we could ditch the formal wear and take the beauty of the evening to bed.

The rest of me—the part, you know, kind of synched up to a parasitic Shadow sent to me by the son of the king of Hell—reminded me that I had other things to do.

Oh, I was still certainly _hoping_ that I could finish the night off that way, but the date itself would have to wait. I was going to keep Red right beside me as long as I could, though, and leave her with the others if I managed to catch one of our targets in conversation.

Turns out it started at the bar.

Now, I had no idea the Goths even _had_ their liquor license (hoped they did, anyway… oh, well…), but they had set up a pretty great cash bar on one curve of their circular coffee and espresso station. I couldn't risk drinking a single drop of liquor that evening, so I had the tall Goth tending bar pour me tonic with lime, just so I'd have something convincing in my hand.

"Ooohhh, no dry martini?" Red smirked up at me.

"Saving that for the finale, my dear," I grinned back at her as she collected her own mocked-up tumbler full of soda water and grenadine. For added effect, I caught her around the waist and pressed a kiss into her hair.

"Ugh," the Goth scoffed. "Go take your fairy tale romance to another side of the shop or leave."

"I'm not really interested in fairy tales tonight," I stated. "Got any sins?"

"All over the fucking walls. Move."

"No offense, but I had no idea you guys were able to throw parties like this."

"Parties are for crowd-pleasers like you," the Goth mumbled. "We're _hosts,_ not _partiers."_

"Well, then. _Pardon me,"_ I said, over-enunciating. The Goth simply attempted to ignore me. "Where's the man of the evening?"

"Sulking somewhere over there." He sort of nodded in the direction of the _Limbo_ painting across from the bar. "Stop talking, I can't hear the music."

Red tried to smile and thank the Goth for the simple drink, but, knowing he'd have none of it, I calmly suggested we keep moving. I was going to fucking speak to Wilcox about these paintings and that circle shit no matter what, and the sooner I caught him, the better.

The artist was in conversation with the dog-faced woman I recognized as the one who had overseen the carting in of the _Wrath_ painting. Wilcox seemed to be sweating simply being in her presence, and I mean, he'd always been a nervous guy, but there was plenty in the woman's stern expression telling me that she wanted to be watching him squirm. Whoever she was, I was more than convinced that she was linked to—

…To the man who appeared rather suddenly into my field of vision when Red and I took one step closer. We drew in the same gasp, and Red tried to avert her eyes, while I didn't even dare to blink.

Damien was dressed for the occasion, and quite nearly to Goth standards, at that. All in black and grey but for a red silk tie, he wore a high-collared shirt and old-fashioned waistcoat; his pants tucked in at the shins to thick, high-laced leather boots. On every finger but his thumbs, he wore a silver ring, and he raised up his right hand to toast me with a glass of red wine before he turned and walked into the room I knew was the Goths' office area.

"Dammit," I whispered, glancing around to see if I could find any of the others. Luckily, Clyde and Bebe had just made their way over to the bar, and as soon as Clyde saw me in mid-search, he sent Bebe over.

The striking blonde maneuvered her way through the crowd, holding her glass of white wine over the shoulders of others as she passed so as not to spill a drop. She winked at me before linking her free arm with Red's, and she said brightly, "Hey! You guys enjoying yourselves?"

"So far," I said, starting to step back.

The girls both smiled, and Red squeezed my hand before letting go. "Let's move up closer," my girlfriend suggested to Bebe, who then angled herself such that a simple white rose pin she wore on her tight black dress could be in full view of the _Limbo_ painting.

"Check," I heard Red Serge say into the wire. "Bebe, move in closer to your target; Stan, got yours, too."

The girls scooted closer so that Bebe's hidden camera could capture the painting's details, and so that Red was next in line to speak to Wilcox. With luck, she could keep him going until I was finished with Damien… or else one of the guys would be able to step in and gather even more from him.

In the clear, I set my glass down on the end of the bar and slipped away toward the office. My shadow shifted against the light, tugging itself under the crack in the door before I'd even put a hand to the knob. Frowning at the fate-mocking shadow, I opened the door and stepped in. I was met, as I was more or less expecting, with utter darkness.

My hand fumbled for the switch on the wall to my left, and as soon as I clicked the light on, I heard the familiar electric buzz of the harsh overhead light. I blinked to adjust to the light, but I saw nothing in the room.

The light snapped itself off, then flickered back on, the dimmer activating itself so that I stood in only half light. My eyes went immediately to the floor, where I saw the shadow of a hand reaching toward the neck of my own; I felt a tickle in my throat when the two shadows connected, and I jerked my head up, to see Damien sitting cross-legged on the large walnut office desk at the center of the room.

"Hey, there, McCormick."

The door behind me breezed shut.

I kept myself facing forward, repeating a mantra of not to give off any indication that I might be surprised. Another quick glance at the floor showed me that our shadows were no longer linked, but mine did seem to be tugging at my feet.

"How good of you to drop in this evening," Damien continued. He took a sip from the glass he held, and drummed the fingers of his other hand on the desk.

"You more or less invited me, remember?" I said sharply.

A grin stretched across Damien's face, showing his perfectly aligned, if slightly sharp, teeth.

"Been sending a lot of letters, lately, haven't you?" I continued.

"Gasp. You caught me."

I scowled, and advanced a few more paces. "I want to know what you're doing here," I said. "Where the fuck are the people you sent all your letters to?"

"One of them is standing right in front of me," said Damien, plainly, not moving. "One is on the roof. Two others are right… out… there." He waggled a ringed finger in the general area of the door, the tip of it making a slightly circular motion.

"Cut the bullshit," I barked, wanting to just grab him and shake him. I knew that that wouldn't work on him the way it might work on someone like Sargeant Yates, or any of the simple mob types I'd dealt with on past League missions, back when work was slightly less chaotic. "Sally Turner, and the other people you've been cloning. Where are they?"

"Turner… Turner… ah, yes!" Damien let out a little laugh, and twisted the ring on his middle finger around with his thumb. "She fit right in, and she is doing exactly what she signed up for."

"What are you offering?" I demanded.

"Opportunity."

Damien stood, his feet hardly making a sound as they touched the floor. My shadow shifted to form a circle around him, and he waved down at it before lifting his head high and stepping around my shadow in order to slowly pace the room.

His voice was chillingly stable.

"I am a very persuasive man, Mr. McCormick. I am also in dire need of a little man-power." He paused, as if to make damn sure I was listening, and added, "It's a tough economy, I understand. And I offer _wonderful_ benefits."

"You're making threats," I corrected him. "You're attacking families. Even your own," I added with a little difficulty.

Damien laughed. "Oh, that one _was_ fun," he commented. Mid-pace, he vanished, only to re-appear standing against the edge of the desk again. I yet again tried not to react.

"Nice parlor trick," I said, folding my arms. "What else can you do, pull Gingers from your magic hat?"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Damien said, all too unconcerned. "Speaking of which, have you quite yet met my messenger?"

"I've fuckin' had it up to here with messengers," I grumbled. I leaned up against the end of the wooden chair nearest me, an old Victorian thing that I knew my sister couldn't stand looking at during her shifts but that the Goths obviously wanted to keep around somewhere in their horribly predictable establishment. "You could've done worse than Scott Tenorman. He was insane before insane was a thing around here."

"Funny you should be talking about insanity," said the devil's son wistfully. "This entire town, from what I understand, has insanity flowing through it like a tide."

"Cut the poetics," I snapped. "This shop is melancholy enough. You do realize you're doing the Goths extreme business favors by being here, by the way."

"They aren't Satanists. I don't care."

"Do you care about anything?"

Damien grinned and stuck his nose over the rim of his wine glass. I was doubting more by the second that what was in there was actually Merlot. "I care about the fact that you're wrong."

"What about?" I had to know.

"Tenorman isn't my messenger," said Damien plainly. "He's a vital cog. Emphasis on the vital."

"As in breathing," I guessed. "Just takin' a stab."

"You have good aim."

"Damien, can we cut this out and can you get to the fucking point?"

"The point?" He feigned innocence. He was worse at that than Eric Cartman, and that was saying something. Then again, even Cartman had softened in the last couple years, with a resurgence in his assholery over the past few months (read: once he was around Butters again) (those guys, seriously, they needed to call it or end it for good). Of course, maybe there was a connection in that. Certainly wouldn't be the most surprising thing to learn anymore.

"Yeah, the point of why you're here and why you're doing this."

"Oooooh, just look at you," Damien cooed, wrenching my face around with one hand, his fingers clamped firm as a cold steel vice around my chin. His skin felt tight and had a strange kind of fabricy softness to it, as if it were more of a bone coating than actual skin. "God's favorite asshole. I don't know what Fate ever saw in you."

I smacked his hand away. "Oh, are we bringing Fate into this now?" I chided. "Speaking of which, take my fucking powers away again, Damien. I don't want them and I don't need them."

"So ungrateful." He clicked his tongue and turned away from me, running a pale finger around the rim of his wine glass. "So _very_ ungrateful. No, you will keep them. You never know when they'll become handy. And besides, dear boy, it's a gift."

"Which reminds me of my old _curse,_ so I repeat—"

"Shush, shush, shush," Damien scolded. He whirled on his leather boot heel to face me again, and took three echoing steps in my direction. "You appreciate art, don't you, Mr. McCormick?" he asked me, almost out of nowhere. "Tell me, what do you think of these commissions of mine?"

"Commi—_commissions?"_ I growled. "You fucking prick, you _commissioned_ Wilcox to paint these nightmares?"

"The man is being well-paid." Damien stared at his fingernails to show just how boring conversation with a mortal like me was. Right, and accurate compensation for the artist was clearly my only problem with this whole thing. "I've been using my father's old pseudonym to pay him."

"Going by 'Lucifer,' then, huh?" I snorted. I should have figured. I sure as hell hoped the guys were catching this over the wire, assuming they didn't all have their hands too full back out in the main room. At the very least, Red Serge and Iron Maiden were recording.

"Lucifer Alighieri Thorn," Damien informed me. "Yes."

"Didn't know you'd like Dante that much," I said, trying to sound as monotone as possible in order to get my information.

Damien's thin lips twisted into something that I suppose could be called a smile. He held up his wine to stare up at me through the murky red liquid, and his answer echoed against the glass, sending a crystalline hum out into the already dank air. "That incredulous poet. I'm afraid my father is something of a patron of the arts."

"He has horrible taste in upholstery, though," I scorned Damien for the fuck of it, just to see how far I could push the Anti-Christ's buttons, "if I remember correctly."

Damien scowled, and down came the dramatically raised glass. "You do know how to spoil moments, McCormick."

"And you sure know how to put me to sleep faster than my economics professor," I quipped back, keeping my monotone. "Was there a point to this? You, Wilcox, Dante? Just a refresher?" I spun my hands around each other, indicating that he'd better hurry up because Mysterion does not have all day.

"By all means," Damien said dully, "guess to your beating heart's content."

"What's the _POINT?"_ I snapped. "Why are you here and why are you fucking with us?"

"I suppose you're expecting me to say 'because I can,'" Damien said on an almost whispered tone, that seemed to cling to the air in hisses throughout the room all the same. The hiss of a burning fire: everywhere yet centralized, all at once. "But I have come simply to… shall we say… tie up loose ends. Or, rather, claim them."

"Claim… loose ends?" I repeated, utterly lost.

"Claim them, conquer them, stick my flag into the soil. Do I make myself clear?"

"Nope."

"Simplistic little mind in that once-Immortal head of yours," Damien said, clicking his tongue. "Loose ends, boy, loose ends."

Henrietta, Stan and I had been onto something. Oh, fuck it, we all had. Damien had access to the Dreamlands. He had to have a working knowledge of Henrietta's chart as well. And he'd probably been watching our entire plight against the Old Ones, laughing the entire time. "The Spaces Between—" I realized.

"They do not abide by the universal laws," Damien said disapprovingly. "But my father is a resourceful man, and Hell has been getting rather full lately…"

Oh, no. No, no: he really was trying to claim the Between.

_WE SHALL BUILD THE NEW BETWEEN,_ Scott Tenorman had written on his asylum wall.

They were moving in. Moving Hell closer. Expanding the circles into the pocket dimensions on Earth and into people's dreams… starting with the army Tenorman had already amassed, and moving on to attack those of us in the League, and those that we loved or knew closely. If Damien succeeded, assuming that was his mission, they would be able to acquisition people into the legions of the dead by killing silently and at random. Death by dreams, death by sleep. Simple, easy.

Untraceable.

"Luckily, that madman gave me all the opportunity I needed," Damien went on. "He may not be my messenger, but, dear boy, he is _very_ crucial to my work. I do enjoy the networking he's done for me thus far."

"Networking," I scoffed. "You mean Liane Cartman."

"I mean _Eric_ Cartman."

"You don't say," I growled.

"I mean you as well, don't worry," Damien sneered.

"What the fuck? Is this about one of your Divine Threesomes or what the _fuck_ ever?" I shouted. "Okay, so I was born into a curse, and Cartman was born with something to do with both you and the Old Ones—"

"And I was never born," said Damien. I half expected him to feign a yawn, he was projecting such an air of being bored. "Are we here to discuss childhoods, or may I continue?"

"YOU TELL ME," I roared.

"Careful, boy," Damien said in a sing-song tone, holding out his free hand to stop me from moving forward. "You do have a very interesting group of friends. I'd like to introduce you to mine."

"Not interested."

"No choice. The Carnival is coming to town, McCormick!" Damien outstretched his arms invitingly as he stepped away from me again. "Show some excitement, won't you! Carnivals are meant to be _fun,_ aren't they? Food, festivities… and oh, you just wait until you see our attractions. We just have a little more recruiting to do."

Cartman.

Possibly all of us, but definitely Cartman. Not on my watch, though. That annoying asshole was sticking with us, no matter what.

"I do have my father to thank for the funding, of course, though the mission is entirely mine," Damien went on. He sure was spilling a lot. Something told me he was enjoying it. He did roll his eyes, though—red globes circled in ghostly white as he expressed one ounce of disdain. "The poet was given some creative input, of course."

"Dante," I guessed. "So you've met the guy."

"I meet many people in Hell. Are you kidding me? My father used to make me throw him parties on the anniversary of his book's release. Him and that other mad author." Other…? _Alhazred?_ "Dante Alighieri, you see, is a soul that we allow to wander the levels of Hell freely," Damien told me. "He chronicled them, after all. No man more fit than he who penned the _Book of the Inferno."_

"I always just heard it as _The Inferno,"_ I noted aloud. "And then, what…"—shit, what had Kyle and Stan been reading in class (…and, furthermore, was that just coincidence)?—_"The Purgatorio, _and _The Paradisio?"_

"The other two were boring reads society wanted." Damien waved a hand in front of him to indicate that they were no big deal. _"The Book of the Inferno_ is my father's greatest commission. He took a liking to that poet and…"

I laughed. "Fuck, man, your dad _is_ a slut."

"Do not cheapen my father's great name by doling out such indecencies!" Damien screamed at me. "Do you want to hear these words or don't you, Shadow?"

I wanted to spit back at him that nobody should ever fucking call me that anymore, but I held my tongue. Honestly. Cthulhu was dead, R'lyeh was gone; that was all behind me. The resurgence of my abilities and Damien's taunting nickname were too much for me to handle.

"Just tell me why you call it that," I asked.

"It is our text. That is all I care to tell you now."

"Your text?" I scoffed. "What, so, like, he was your prophet? You're telling me Dante is to this _Book of the Inferno_ as Joseph Smith was to the _Book of Mor—"_

"HOLD YOUR IDOLATROUS TONGUE!" Damien shrieked. The wine glass was dropped, then shattered on the floor. He flew across the room in a fit of rage, clamped both of his hands around my mouth, and continued running until he had me slammed up against a file cabinet shaped like a coffin. Those motherfucking Goths, I _swear._ Some things I understood, but shit like that was just _tacky._ Yes, I'm a straight dude using the word _tacky_ in terms of room décor, but you did not see that fucking file cabinet. Jesus Christ.

(And yes I'm aware of the irony or what the fuck ever of the Anti-Christ holding me, an ex-Immortal, against it.)

"You—that does it," sputtered that black-haired sub-demon, eyes aflame and lips curled back over his too-white teeth. "I need to get back out there to keep up appearances with my dear artist friend, but I have not finished with you, McCormick, oh, no. Hell wants you back, boy. We're waiting."

"Hell can suck it," I muffled into his hands. His palms didn't feel like they even had creases to them, his skin was so wrong. Like someone had just ironed him right out. I supposed that made sense, though: no distinguishing marks. No fingerprints. "R'lyeh couldn't have me, and you can't, either."

"Perhaps," was all Damien said, having understood my every word. He stepped back. "Keep those friends in your sights, Shadow," he scowled as he straightened his funeral home suit and prepared to take his leave. "You'd be better to join me on this mission, though. Either that, or be prepared to watch one or two of them simply hand themselves over."

I knew exactly who he was talking about. Given the situation, how could I not? But as far as I was concerned at that moment in time, Damien was most certainly not claiming Kyle and had no fucking chance in any perceivable lifetime or dimension of taking Red.

After he left, I waited a good twenty seconds, mostly preoccupied with staring at the liquid that had spilled out of the broken wine glass, before leaving for the storefront proper myself. A scattered few of the invited guests were still mingling about. Henrietta was stuck at the bar, looking ready to kill someone or something (if she absolutely had to, I hoped she'd go for the rat I kept seeing poke its head out of the corner of the room every now and then), and her companion with the two-toned hair was sucking down a clove and nodding blankly while he listened to Henrietta talk about a painting I'd not yet seen entitled _Heresy._

Damien was nowhere to be seen. Keep up appearances, my pasty white ass. Fucker was just trying to play me around for an idiot.

But I knew his weakness. I could not fucking wait to share it.

And not only did I know his weakness, but I knew plenty of people who knew just how to keep me in the loop about it. Plus, there were the Harrisons to consider, now. Already targets, we knew, but we'd need to keep them protected with an even more watchful eye now, if Damien had reeled that much at the mention of their Book. In addition, I was sure that other texts about and from the highest plane of certain circles would send Damien into similar fits. Maybe Damien had dismissed Dante's other two texts, but I had a feeling we'd find some comfort in the _Paradisio_ at least…

Time to start literally counting blessings, I guess.

And, hey, I'd commanded the forces of Heaven once before, as a kid… during a coma and later death. If I was going to rise against Hell again, we'd need to learn as much as we could about its primary opposition.

When I found myself in the thick of the gala again, Wilcox was nowhere to be seen. Not in the main room, anyway. I did catch sight of Stan and Kyle, though, both of whom were studying—and most likely sending information back to the base on—a painting entitled _Fraud,_ its female, Greek-inspired subject looking just familiar enough…

_Wendy?_

No way; no way could Wilcox have painted Wendy. Wait—no doubting, no doubting, Kenny McCormick; anything was possible with that man.

"Got it," I heard Red Serge say through the wire. My heart skipped a beat when he spoke… I realized that, the entire time I'd been in conversation with Damien, I hadn't heard a thing. Not a word, not even a crackle. As if I'd just been taken away from the world for those few minutes. "We just need visuals of three more and we've got our set."

I made my way over to the two, who looked a little shocked to see me.

"Dude, where the hell have you been?" Stan asked, keeping his tone low.

"Got talking to Damien," I whispered back, hoping not to attract any attention from the multitudes of cloned subjects and apparent GSM allies throughout the establishment. "How long've I been away?"

"I dunno, twenty minutes? Half an hour?" Kyle guessed.

"No fucking way, that long?" My shadow yanked at my limbs, and I gazed up at the painting. "Anyway," I muttered, dismissing my apparently lengthy absence as yet another of Damien's parlor tricks. "What've we got so far?"

"Pretty crazy shit, but no less than what we were expecting," said Stan, ticking his head up at the painting.

"Is that Wendy?" I had to ask.

"Okay, so we're not the only ones who think that," Kyle said on a short breath. "And, dude, you're not even going to—just… look at one of the ones in the other room. Clyde about snapped when he saw it."

"Why, what about it?"

"Just—just go in there, you'll see."

I glanced around again. "Where's Red? And—"

"She and Bebe followed that weird curator lady into the women's bathroom," Stan told me, "and Clyde's waiting for them till he, uh… heads out."

"Already?"

"Just look at that painting," Kyle stressed through clenched teeth.

I nodded, knowing that there was little else the guys could actually tell me. "How're you two doing, anyway?" I managed to get in before I left to browse more of the gallery and attempt to catch Wilcox again. "That one with the mirrors…"

"Is still the worst thing I've ever seen," said Kyle.

"And I'm really not fond of that one with the urns," Stan added. _"Lust,_ was it? Noooot a fan."

It seemed that each of us was having troubles with one specific work of Wilcox's art. I hadn't found one yet that really made me jump the way those two had at _Wrath_ and _Lust,_ but I began preparing myself for the moment I would.

My shadow tugged along at me, as if to greet every member of the crowd, while I dodged the apparent sea of not-quite-alive bodies that made up the bulk of the gala patrons. More sets of eyes were focused on Kyle, I noticed. How many of them were out for my girlfriend, as well…?

I made it a point to take a look at the paintings in the main room one last time before heading into the adjunct room where the band was playing. The hazy lake of _Limbo_ first, then _Lust,_ bearing the two urns, _Wrath_ and its mirrors, _Fraud's_ odd likeness to one of our own and her scale showing the highest and lowest respective rolls of a set of red dice.

Once I was in the other room, it was impossible not to notice the canvas directly beside the band's guitar amp. Heart pounding, I made my way over to it, if only to take in the title of the painting. After all, I'd seen the image before. I was half-expecting to see that motif show up as it was.

_Violence_ was the title. And it was a very simple painting, red on black: the GSM symbol, three rows of three dots, together under a large broken circle.

The band's vocalist stepped up to a microphone the moment I read the title, and began to sing:

_"Circle up, now, step right in_

_ It's a bargain, really, just a penny and a sin_

_ Be the first in line to feed the fire_

_ Nine full circles and a brand new pyre—"_

I looked only once at the vocalist before I noticed that he was wearing a black hood over his face. He wasn't very tall, nor did he have a singer's voice. It was a voice I was sure I'd heard before, though. Recently.

_"Now the Carnival is waiting, and we're ready to begin."_

That was it.

The young man who'd delivered my letter. Which, of course, got me wondering if I was the only one hearing the lyrics. A glance over in the direction of the restrooms, where I did indeed find Clyde stationed outside the women's room, got that thought out of me pretty quick.

Clyde looked haunted. Pissed, even, but definitely haunted, disgusted. He wanted to get out of there and go active. I thought for a second about going over to speak with him, but he caught sight of me. He shifted his eyes to the vocalist, gave me a _what the fuck?_ shrug, then glanced back at the bathroom door again.

I didn't have to wonder long what had gotten him into that state. Directly across the room from him, on the wall to my right as I walked further away from the band, was the very painting that Kyle and Stan had insisted I see. The first painting on that wall was the carousel horse I had earlier seen, its pole red and its title _Gluttony,_ but beside that was one entitled _Greed._

It was a small painting, compared to most of the others, and had a very direct subject. A mask, covered in blood. The mask itself was done in light grey, but it was pretty obvious what and whose it was. Clyde had been wearing a Mardi Gras-inspired 'mosquito' half mask for years, changing its design every now and then… so while it was one thing to see a face slightly reminiscent of Wendy's in one painting, it hit even closer to home to see _Mosquito's own mask_ in another.

The pattern on the mask was different, though: it bore an odd web of lines, as if the mask had been cut out of a section of the chart in Henrietta's tome of _Dhol Chants._ The string that kept the mask in place around Clyde's head on missions had been replaced with black and grey ribbons, ripped and frayed.

_Greed?_

Why the fuck would anything ever depict Clyde as an avaricious person? I knew the guy; I mean, sure, he and I had similar lapses in judgment, but we were fucking human and humans fuck up and covet and whatever, but he was _not covetous_ in any kind of sinful way. In fact, he was one of the most lionhearted people I knew, especially when it came to taking care of Bebe.

He was not greedy. He was protective, and dutiful.

I really, really needed to talk to Wilcox.

Other heads were turned, as well, and the crowd gave into the pleasure of listening to the music. With Damien's scraped together army distracted by what could only be a sort of call to arms for them, I was free to slip on through, and find, singled out away from the crowd, the artist. At last.

Wilcox stood in front of a good-sized painting that showed a figure descending from a goldish white light and into a pit of swirling shadows. Red wings were affixed to her back.

"So," I said, making Wilcox jump at the mere sound of my voice. "Jeez, skittish?"

"When you've lived a life of nightmares," said the man, sheepishly, "you grow used to things like this." No kidding. The guy looked like a weathered sheet of paper. His skin seemed to be turning grey along with his hair… and not just grey in many places, but bone white, as if he just could not ask for death fast enough. I had to applaud him for not taking his own life this far in, but a morbid part of me wondered why he hadn't.

"I kinda hear you on that," I told him. He eyed me oddly; of course, he'd had plenty of conversations about R'lyeh with Mysterion, but tonight I didn't quite look the hero type. I was just another college kid who only looked good in what he was wearing because his girlfriend could rent things out from the store she worked at. True-ass story of my current life.

"You have nightmares, Mr…?"

"McCormick. And yeah, kind of. Who doesn't?"

Wilcox shook his brittle head, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that he had one hand in his suit coat pocket; he was fiddling it around as neurotically as Butters Stotch had always kneaded his knuckles, but I couldn't remember seeing this as a tick before in the artist. With Cthulhu and the other Old Ones gone for four years, though, something else was bound to creep into that poor man's haunted mind. Maybe not fits of insanity, as had been Their game, but something a little more time-tested.

It took no stretch of the imagination to realize that he was fiddling with a rosary.

I used to go to Catholic mass with my parents. They'd clean me and Kevin and Karen up, get us dressed in the only sets of nice clothes we had, and sit us down to listen to Father Maxi warn us about Hell for a couple hours. I'd always tuned him out, since I'd known more than he did about Hell but could never really speak up about it, so in the days after I became too old for Sunday School, I just started watching people.

At first, it was all about checking out the girls and wondering if a single one of them still believed in staying a virgin till she got married (and, if so, if she was okay with oral), but then it just became about people, and the way they projected themselves. I saw so much rosary-fiddling going on in the pews during those days. I saw the way men would rub their thumbs over the crucifix, the way the women would count the beads. It was so interesting to me.

Growing up the way I had, not being able to die, religion had kind of been a fascination for me. I wondered a couple of times if anything would change my Immortality if I changed religions, but I deduced that since it was a curse the answer was no. So I went on living and dying and watching people and wishing it were easier to _choose_ to go to Heaven or Hell, and wonder if I'd ever get to talk to God, and wonder if Karen was doing all right and if she still believed in her Angel.

Wilcox was not one of those people who just fiddled with a rosary out of habit. He did it with purpose. This wasn't just bead counting or tracing the cross or anything usual. This was, _Someone save me._

But I had to pretend I didn't know that, and just play 'ignorant college guy' for a little while longer. "So, what's up with this piece?" I asked the artist, finally getting around to posing the question I'd been meaning to state from the start of our unusual conversation.

"Oh. Yes. This," he said. Forcing his hand to go still, Wilcox looked over the painting with me, in order to explain the symbolism in further detail. "Heresy is the Sixth Circle of Hell," he continued. "After Wrath, and before Violence."

"Who's this woman?" I wondered, indicating the celestial being at the center, engulfed in shadows.

"You can tell she's a woman?" Wilcox laughed nervously. "A lot of people I've spoken to are unsure."

My stomach flipped, but I held myself together. "Lucky guess," I shrugged. "I just figured she's important. Is she, what's her name, there, Beatrice?" I had to scour my brain, but I could vaguely remember the name of Dante's muse, from Kyle complaining about it for a test.

"You've read _The Inferno,"_ the artist complimented me.

"My roommates did."

"I see. I suggest you read it. This woman is the Voice of Divine Reason. Beatrice, yes, for Dante, but a different woman for every traveler."

"Is she always a woman?"

"As far as… as far as the nightmares go, yes. Doesn't have to be a lover. A mother is a common interpretation. Or a sister."

Wait.

"What's the Voice of Divine Reason doing in that pit of shadows?" I had to know.

"Oh." Wilcox looked like he was sweating with anxiety. "Because this is the Sixth Circle. She is a heretic, and must fall with the rest."

Oh.

Shit.

_Romans 3:23,_ I could almost hear Karen's voice whispering into my mind.

My attention was doubly distracted, then, by the painting I then noticed directly beside _Heresy._ It moved me in a way that the first painting had not… in the way that the others must have felt when discovering that one image that truly set them off.

It was an image I knew would be burned into my mind for some time to come. Something that, indeed, was to appear in dreams here and there. It was a painting of a forest. A forest of dead, sinewy trees, creating a thicket over a path which at first I theorized as a possible extension of the watery path already depicted in the _Limbo_ painting.

Hanging from every single tree—and this must have taken Wilcox quite some time to move from mind to canvas, since the trees seemed to have no end—was a noose.

Nine of them were red.

The nine red ropes hung directly over the path at varying heights, and in various states of decay. Some seemed to be clinging sturdily to the branches, while others were decrepit, worn, on branches about to snap. It felt like death.

My blood churned, and my shadow shifted so that I saw a full silhouetted outline of myself directly against the canvas, as if it were meant to be one final addition to the work itself. The hands of my shadow went to the throat, and I copied the action, remembering the sensation of not being able to breathe.

I had been decapitated before. Hanged, even. I had undergone numerous deaths that had cut off my air supply or broken my neck. My very first death had been a form of asphyxiation.

Yet something was telling me, once my shadow slithered back down to the floor, that my deaths were not necessarily the ones represented in full in the painting.

The title was _Treachery._

The band had stopped playing, I realized. And the lights went out.

I felt a pair of arms wrap around my shoulders, but I was now too shocked to even cry out.

"Where's that jaw drop I was hoping for, McCormick?"

Cold fingers grabbed my chin and forced me to release my jaw. I let out the startled breath I'd been holding in.

"There we are," Damien said, satisfied.

I slapped his hand off of my face and spun to face him. We were the only ones in the room, as if time had stopped and the world had gone away again. This time I did grab him, by the lapel of his waistcoat. Raising a fist to strike, I demanded, "What do you want from me?"

Damien grinned.

_"Know who your friends are, Mysterion,"_ his voice hissed out into the air when the room went so dark I could no longer see him.

The lights came back on.

I found myself holding Wilcox instead of the devil's son, and the artist's eyes went wide. I released him quickly and brushed off his shoulders. "I'm sorry," I said hurriedly. "I'm sorry, so sorry, I didn't mean—"

"That's… that's all right," said the skittish man. "That isn't the first time seeing one of my works has done that to a person."

"What?"

"Did you dream?"

I glanced back at the painting, and began to doubt every sense I had. Where there had been two, now there were three. But the third, situated in the middle, between _Treachery_ and _Heresy_ was nothing but a blank white canvas inside a red frame.

Its title was _Pride—Work In Progress._

Damien's. Not the painter's.

Damien was building upon the nine circles that already composed the layers of Hell. He had been sent to Earth, traveling through the Dreamlands and collecting an army, to create the tenth circle.

_Hell wants you back,_ he had told me. Oh, but he wasn't intending on dragging me down.

He was bringing it to me.

Death is immortal. While men cannot live forever, their creations can. The commissions were a formality. Hell's text, the _Book of the Inferno,_ was immortal, the creation of a poet. Wilcox's works, then…? And dreams…?

"I'm… I'm not sure," I said.

"Best begin keeping track," the artist cautioned me. He was shaking, and started fiddling with his rosary again.

It was impossible not to notice that the shadows in the room began gravitating toward mine at that point. Wilcox shook his head, and stared at the blank canvas. The canvas reflected no light, and cast no shadow of its own. It existed out of space and out of time. It was a work in progress, a blank slate; it was nothing, it did not yet exist. It was the highest tier of every warning we had thus far been dealt.

"Especially since you seem to have a nightmare following you right now."

I refused to stare at the floor when Wilcox spoke those words.

Of fucking course Damien would attack me with a literal nightmare. Attack me, affix it to me, taunt me with it, destroy me with it. As long as my shadow had the ability to move on its own, I would share a connection with the Hell that Damien was trying to build upon.

It got worse, too, when I heard the lead singer, the hooded young man, speak into the microphone, "You have been a most attentive audience this evening, my brothers and sisters. Do turn your attention to the side of the stage for our latest attraction. Not one but two new acts have graciously allowed us the pleasure of their audience."

Two new—shit, shit, _shit._

I hated to leave that conversation with Wilcox hanging, but I had to push back to the front of the crowd, where I then heard a scream.

"RED!"

Red cut off her own scream, and it was echoed by a barking, hoarse yelp. I shoved a man and woman apart at the front of the crowd in order to find a scene in front of me that, had this been any other function, would have sent any crowd scattering. As it stood, however, the hungry crowd were waiting like vultures for their own turn to move.

The dog-faced old woman was letting my girlfriend out of what looked like an already desperate grasp of her upper arms: the bitch stood behind Red, who was balanced forward on her right foot—the sharp heel of her left shoe she had just jabbed in self defense into the woman's stomach.

The woman was surrounded, too: Stan had entered the room and held one of his stunners on her left, while Clyde had done the same on her right; Kyle, too, had entered the sudden fray and stood behind the woman, a switchblade pressed against her collarbone.

I rushed forward, and took hold of Red's hands when she held them out to me. Kyle kneed the old woman in the back, causing her to release the rest of her grip and collapse onto the floor. When Red yanked her shoe out of the woman's gut, there was no blood. Once standing with more stability, Red pulled her shoes off and tossed both of them down at the woman.

"She's a fucking demon!" Red alerted me.

"It's okay, it's okay," I assured her, tightening my grip. "I'm sorry I wasn't right here—"

Red shook her head. "I'm fine, I swear I'm fine, but…"

"I'm sorry."

"It appears," said the vocalist, "that the reception is over. Shall we continue with our recruitment efforts for the evening?"

"I've got you," I whispered to Red, pulling her close with my right arm so that she was pressed right up against me, and I had free movement of my left hand. I flicked my wrist to activate my hidden gun, and the second it snapped into my hand, I fired, aiming to knock back the young man's hood.

He moved his head to the side, and the bullet hit directly to the right of the _Violence_ painting behind the band. That was the action that propelled the room into motion, then, as well.

In an instant, the room erupted into mayhem. Some crowd members cleared out—band members included—but we found ourselves suddenly stacked against the currently countless clones from those Damien had somehow convinced to join the Carnival ranks.

"Kyle," Clyde said sternly, snapping out the gun for his other hand, so that he could maneuver both weapons. "You getting anything?"

"Open fire, dude," Kyle said, as the four of us guys started instinctively forming a shield around Red and Bebe. It wasn't that they couldn't take care of themselves… far from it; it was just that the four of us had a _lot_ more experience than the two of them did. And if Red was a target, it was Bebe's job to get her as far the fuck away from danger as possible. Kyle could hold his own. Red couldn't hold hers, not at the level we'd found ourselves at anyway. But I loved her deeply for so much as keeping her head up. She was wonderful in the face of adversity. I just didn't want her getting in deeper than she could handle. "Every one of these guys is reading as inanimate. Except her for some reason," Kyle added, ticking his head over at the crumpled dog-faced woman.

Oh, I had a feeling she wasn't down for the count.

But I couldn't be too awful concerned about that right now. The vocalist, the only member of the band still onstage, grabbed the mic and shouted the command, "Do not lose the potential recruits! The order is out, my friends! This is our moment!"

"Would someone shut him up?!" Stan shouted. "Not helping my concentration."

"Gladly," I growled. I shot again, and this time my bullet knocked the mic right out of the guy's hands.

"Clearin' a path, folks, pardon me!" Clyde called through the crowd.

That hollered out, he broke formation and opened fire, as Kyle had suggested; Clyde had probably the best aim of our three active marksmen, and he put that eye to good use, wasting not a single tranq bullet in the process of shooting his way in a clear path through the crowd and toward the front door. "Ladies first!"

Bebe wriggled out from formation as well, and used the straps of her stiletto heels to tie the shoes together. Strung out, they were the most unconventional pair of _nunchaku_ I had ever seen, but probably also among the most deadly, so I gave the girl some super high credit for the move. Especially when, just before she could say a word, she spun her improvised weapon out and cut a man in the back of his neck. When he fell forward, she pushed him off, but another rushed up to grab her from the side.

Bebe then pulled a hairpin out from her up-do and stabbed it into the man's back, momentarily crippling his spinal column. "Damn, babe!" Clyde grinned over at her.

"Compliments later, sweetheart," she said back on a huff of breath. Reclaiming her strung-together stilettos, Bebe rushed up to me and Red.

As she was catching her breath, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, Henrietta appearing on the scene. As the crowd of GSM clone-activists continued to keep their attention on those of us bent on going against them, the Goth slunk against the wall until she had reached Mr. Wilcox, who himself stood paralyzed in the shadows of his own two disturbing paintings. His silhouette was framed by _Heresy_ and _Treachery,_ though I had the distinct feeling that _Pride_ had nothing to do with the artist's own semblance of self-worth. Wilcox had none. That was the commissioned work meant to truly haunt every single one of us. Because it had no precedent.

But of that later. For now, I was glad to see Henrietta grab the man out of the room, and I hoped she'd devise some way to keep him in the fucking building until we could all sit down and have a nice talk. Assuming the coffee shop stayed standing through the night.

I remembered just as Bebe started whispering something to Red that the rest of the town was celebrating various artworks that evening, and that even put my mind to rest a little. The girls would be able to make a fairly easy escape, if there were crowds to work through. I had no idea where Bebe and Clyde had parked, but it almost didn't matter. Those two would stay safe.

Which was exactly Bebe's next promise. "Kenny," she said hurriedly, "I've got Clyde's keys and I'm going to get us the fuck out of here. We'll get on the wire once we're safe, okay? I swear."

"Sure thing," I said. "Take care, guys, okay?" I added, tugging Red in one last time before she could go. "We'll sort this shit out."

"I know you will, Kenny," Red smiled up at me.

I shot back at two men and a woman who were advancing on me. They fell to the ground once hit by my bullets and, just as Kyle had reported from the mission outside the Harrisons', their bodies burst into momentary flames before quite literally giving up the ghost—or, in this case, shadow, which then flitted up into the air or down into the floor and then were seen no further.

"Good luck, Red," I then wished my girlfriend, slipping her a warm, protective kiss. "See you soon, babe, okay?"

She pressed her soft lips to my cheek and kissed my skin after saying, "Give these guys a real taste of Hell, Mysterion."

"Endgame and Marpesia are gonna help us with the getaway," Bebe said in a rushed whisper, cutting off the moment, "but we've gotta move now."

Red nodded, kissed my cheek again, then slipped back, linked elbows with Bebe, and drew the knife at her thigh. I couldn't help but give into a proud grin as I watched her start making her escape through the crowds. I couldn't watch for long, though, since I heard Stan shout out, "On your six, dude!"

I spun around and fired—my bullet found home right at the gathering of freckles on a man's forehead, and he went down before I could even catch the rest of his features. No time for that, though, since he combusted and was reduced to ash and a flitting shadow upon contact with the bullet.

The vocalist, still onstage but without his microphone, was not looking very happy. And I couldn't even see the fucker's face, he was projecting worse than anyone I'd ever seen give off bad vibes before. "Sorry to fuck with your stupid nightmare sideshow," I hollered over at the young man.

"Music didn't quite do it for our tastes," Stan added, snapping out his second gun and keeping it trained on the hooded figure.

"I see," said the current primary opposition. "Tastes do not matter much to us, though. I do hope you understand that. There is also one thing more to understand."

"Oh?" I scoffed.

The young man lifted his hood back just enough to show a twisted smile. It was off, somehow. I couldn't quite explain how. Off, and terrifying. "Chaos," he said, "can manifest in even the brightest of human dreams."

And with that, he tore through the room, making a break for the front door with such speed and accuracy that he surpassed the girls as they still were fighting their way through.

"Stan! Kyle! Stay on him!" I shouted over.

"Done," the two answered in unison. As the two ran, Kyle slipped Red and Bebe his switchblades, and the four then made their way through the crowd. Once the girls were out onto the street, I still had enough of a view out the window to see that Kyle then flicked out his butterfly knives, letting one fly at the young man as they chased him out of view.

Clyde had cleared a pretty clean path, which would allow him and myself a good break at some point, but neither of us seemed quite keen on leaving just yet. "Henrietta's gone upstairs," he informed me when he rushed back to my immediate aid.

"Good. The other two?"

"I don't know. Hair guy's in the office, I think, tall guy's off somewhere, maybe outside." Clyde and I, now faced against the remaining GSM forces, numbering at least a couple dozen, if not somewhere into the low forties, pressed up back to back, he with his two tranquilizer guns drawn, I with my two .45s. A quick maneuver over the shoulder saw my left gun getting traded for his left tranq, so that the two of us had equal aim when it came to knocking out or making kill shots. I didn't quite count them as kill shots, though, since, as Kyle had confirmed for us, none of these high-end-looking men and women was actually alive. At least not in any conventional interpretation of the term.

"They're safe, then," I deduced.

"Safe bet." Clyde fired twice with both guns; I did the same. Neither of us missed. "We making a break?"

"Let's clean house," I suggested. I was so close to wanting to snap down into my gruff Mysterion tone, but I had to continually remind myself that the night had started out under the assumption of simple reconnaissance. Others could handle the hero duties. Right now I was just Kenny, the spy. With firepower. "And then we can—"

"What the _FUCK."_

"What?"

I hardly had to ask. It was mostly just an involuntary outburst after Clyde's own startled shout. After firing a few more times across the room and bringing down a few other non-living activists, I turned to follow Clyde's current field of vision.

He was staring down at where the dog-faced woman had gone down, and while I was anticipating that she, too, might burst into flames or singe into dust before releasing the impish shadow that kept her body animated, what I got was another vision of a nightmare.

It was the sound that grated at me, mostly, though the sight was nothing to marvel at. The woman's bones began to crunch and grind together. It sounded like a symphonic din of hand saws clawing through layers and layers of unbreakable rock. Panting, the woman then rolled up onto all fours.

Clyde and I were then frozen as we watched her body shift. Her angular body shifted and creaked until it rejected a human shape in favor of one more canine-like. And then entirely dogish. Her knotted fingers curved in to form large paws which then in turn sprouted hardened black claws that grabbed into the creaking hardwood floor. Her stretchy skin turned a charred but rock-like grey as she dismissed her human shape.

Within seconds, I could hardly even remember that anyone vaguely representing a woman had been lying there, since Clyde and I now found ourselves face to face with a large grey dog with pitted black eyes, roughly half the length of our enormous meeting table at the base and about four inches taller than the two of us, putting her at about six-foot-two from paw to shoulder. Her head was lowered, and she showed no sign of injury other than a small black hole ripped into her stomach where Red had kicked the woman earlier.

"Oh, fuck," I muttered under my breath.

"Oh, _fuck,"_ Red Serge echoed into my earpiece.

"Yo, guys, quit gawking and look this shit up for us!" Clyde suggested, as he and I began backing away from the enormous dog.

I didn't need Red Serge or Iron Maiden to run any kind of search for us, though. No stretching the imagination on this one. The bitch was a Hellhound. I had seen one of those creatures maybe once or twice during one of my early deaths… just enough of a glimpse to know that Hell had some pretty strange natural fauna, but hadn't really thought of them since.

They were guarders of the inner parts of Hell, where Satan abided (with one of his boy toys _du jour,_ generally), and where I had spotted Damien a few times when we were merely kids. I a child of curses and poor circumstances and he a devil in the making.

The cloned Gingers and their ilk finished clearing out, leaving me and Clyde alone against the beast. She snarled, and put one taloned paw in front of the other, advancing us back, step by step, toward the empty _Pride_ canvas. Neither of us could spare a split second to think. I could hardly even tell if Clyde was breathing… let alone tell if my own damn heart was beating.

Luckily, I had one conscious thought within me, left over from the moment I first began studying the dog as she was re-claiming her true form.

"Hey, Angel?" I whispered into my wire.

"Standing by," my sister said.

"We're gonna need some backup."

She laughed a little. "A bit of divine intervention always helps."

So long as it did not lose its way.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

And here we go! I've been excited to start getting into this part. :3 Sorry for the lateish posting time, though, ahh!

I've been enjoying writing Damien. And those paintings… this is a part we're both having a lot of fun with… ^^

Next time: the fight continues! Hell and the stuff of dreams are starting to weave together, and we'll be indulging in some fights and struggles here soon… BUT. We're taking next week off, and will make the call on whether or not we switch to an every-other week schedule from there (we've been running some odd schedules lately). So we shall see you again on **Wednesday, August 22****nd****!** :3

Thank you so much for reading! ^^

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	9. Ep 9: Taken By Storm

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Stan_

I hate déjà vu.

Not that I can really think of anyone who particularly looks forward to feeling that way—feeling like you've experienced something before, like you've happened upon a person, or place, or time, or even idea—but the bitter truth is, it seeks me out. Or, has, a few different times in my life.

Sometimes I know exactly what the feeling is that I'm re-experiencing. After all, I did grow up in a crazy town. Sometimes, yes, déjà vu pretty much comes in the form of exhaustion, since time is no stranger to particular types of events happening again and again and again. Those times, I can ignore it. I just shake my head, massage my eyes to give them a break from stupidity or monotony, and go about my ridiculous day.

But, believe me, déjà vu, at its worst, is a _bitch._ Because it taunts. It prods and wheedles, it sinks in and creeps up, it pops up into a portion of a memory like an unwanted guest and grabs hold.

It makes your heart skip. It turns life into a horror movie.

At least, the type that I experience tends to work that way.

In the League, I'm the runner. I always have been, and I enjoy that. I'm fast, I'm light on my feet, I can sprint without getting easily exhausted, winded or misdirected. But every quick step I took when chasing the hooded activist out of The Tenth Circle and into the dark streets of an abnormally active evening in my quirky hometown—every step was an off-kilter heartbeat, telling me that something was wrong. That I'd made contact with that young man before, and that he was not someone I had ever wanted to—or thought I'd have to—deal with ever again.

I pressed on, though, giving Kyle a nod as I took strides ahead. The plan was to trap this guy and make him talk. But the stern look on Kyle's face was all the indication I needed that we weren't dealing with a living member of the GSM. This guy was another fabrication.

Either that, or just plain not alive.

Whatever he was, though, we had to take our chances on the simple fact that we could get something out of him. Information, a location… _some_thing. So on I sprinted, until I'd passed the young man; I skidded to a halt, turned, and grabbed out with my left hand, while keeping a firm hold of the stun pistol with my right. It was a lightweight weapon, something much different than I was used to, so I had to keep telling myself _handle with care._

I held it away at first, but did manage to grab hold of the person we were chasing. He shoved my arm away and swung out. I yanked my head back just in time to make him miss, and reached around to my back involuntarily. My hand gripped air rather than the handle of my sledgehammer; I gave myself a little mental slap for getting so wrapped up in fighting this guy, beating this guy, that I'd momentarily forgotten that for now, I was not Toolshed.

Kyle caught up quickly, and as soon as our target turned, Kyle made a grab for his hood. The young man bent at the waist, angling himself away, then grabbed onto Kyle's arm and flipped him over his back. After a quick, startled yelp, Kyle corrected his own trajectory and managed to land on his feet, and before the hooded stranger could attack again, I took a shot.

He slapped a hand to his neck, where the stun shot had nicked him, then chortled and tugged at his hood just enough to let me look at his neck. The skin itself was disturbingly red and raw, and I was able to see dust falling from the shot wound.

"Ashes to ashes," the young man said, as he let the thick grey dust catch the wind. "It's all the same in the end." Covering his neck again, he added, "Though I doubt I need to convince you of that."

"Shut it," Kyle barked, as he righted his own stance. Both knives at the ready, he noted, "You're not like the other guys, huh?" It was true: the result of my shot was only the odd, crumbling dust… not an explosion and a sentient shadow.

"Astute," the young man mocked him back. "One hardly even needs to be psychic to notice that."

I gave Kyle a full glance over once that remark had been made, and instantly saw the gears turning in his head. As comfortable as he'd become, over time and practice, with his abilities, Kyle still hated having the issue _so obviously_ addressed. Especially from someone not in our immediate circle.

And especially when they added something like: "Now that I've introduced the act, why not give us a show?"

"Oh, you motherfucker," Kyle muttered through clenched teeth.

When the stranger turned and began to run again, Kyle let out an angered huff of breath and once again took off after him. As

Something about that guy really did bother me…

Well, no time to muse on that now. We followed the young man past and around three buildings down the block, and when he turned a fast right angle, Kyle spat out, "Fuck," and nearly skidded—I managed to grab and right him just in time for the two of us to continue following our target.

When we made it down the narrow side road the stranger had taken, both of us nearly collided with a car. This time, Kyle grabbed onto me and tugged me back; we both spun, but both of us hit our backs hard against the vehicle… which was luckily parked.

In a not-so-lucky location.

"Dammit," Kyle whispered as he caught his breath, peering around the side of the car we'd collided with. "Dammit, dammit…"

"We're in a parking lot, aren't we?" I realized. I quickly snapped the safety on and re-secured both of my stunners.

"Yup," Kyle complained, likewise hiding his knives. "Guess where Token _isn't_ parked?"

"Shit. What about Bebe?" I realized, hoping the girls had managed to make a safe getaway.

"Dunno. Fuck. We should check in once we locate that guy…"

"Keep a lookout on this side," I suggested. I pressed down on Kyle's shoulder to get him crouched fully behind the car we'd landed against, while I turned to survey the rest of the parking lot.

It was going to be an obstacle course, trying to work our way around the uncoordinated arrangement of the various parked cars in the lot, and it could be more troublesome still if we had to deal with someone returning to the lot to reclaim a vehicle. The obvious answer was move the fight, but the further we chased our target from here, the harder it would be to grab our gear if we needed to really start some League work. And we couldn't risk just asking TupperWear to move the van that held our stuff… that would inconvenience Kenny and Clyde, who were still in the middle of the awful scramble back at the coffee shop.

Just as I was pondering our options, though, I caught sight of the young man we'd been chasing. He was resting nonchalantly against the sole lamp post in the middle of the rather spacious lot. The lot itself was bordered by one side street and one main, an office complex, and a row of restaurants. Meaning plenty of people.

Including a couple heading for our hiding spot right now. My heart skipped; I drew in a startled gasp, then, after catching another glimpse of our currently stationary target, spun back around and said, "We've gotta move."

"Why, what's—"

"We're about to lose the car."

"Huh?"

_"People."_

"Oh!"

Thinking fast, Kyle double-checked to make sure we both had our weapons concealed, then took hold of my hand and led me a couple steps away from the car, just as the middle-aged man and woman I'd seen approaching had made it close enough to notice us. The hooded man had not moved. He didn't seem like he was going to. Kyle nudged me with his shoulder, and I heard him whisper, "Smile," just before he flashed his own grin at the couple and said a friendly, "Oh, hi!"

"Can, uh… can we help you guys with something?" the man wondered.

"What were you doing so close to our car?" the woman added.

_"Your_ car," Kyle laughed convincingly. "No wonder your key didn't work," he added, glancing slightly up at me so I could add on to the sudden fake scenario he'd started.

"Oh! Right, right, yeah, sorry," I said, showing the couple a nervous smile. "I parked further in."

"He _does_ this," Kyle continued, still playing aloof while at the same time leading me further toward the center of the lot. The man had not moved from the lamp post. "You should see him at baggage claim!" I managed a real enough laugh and played up some fake annoyance at Kyle's similarly fabricated anecdote.

"That's all right," the woman said, while the pair looked a little less concerned that we'd been right there at their car. "I know what you mean, my husband does the same thing."

The man simply rolled his eyes and said, "Come on," to his wife.

"Good night," I said to the two with a no-harm-done wave.

Kyle and I continued our way into the center of the lot, both of us keeping an eye out for other possible drivers, or, maybe even worse, new cars entering. Once the couple in the car we'd just left had gone on their way out of the lot, though, we were more or less in the clear.

"Let's hope that was the only time…" Kyle said as each step carried us one step closer to the center of the large lot.

"No kidding."  
"How're we even gonna do this?"

"I've got an idea," I offered, keeping my eyes forward on the man who still had not moved.

"Yeah?"

"We just do this really fucking fast."

Kyle let out a small laugh. "Fine by me."

He let go of my hand, pulled his knives back out, and lunged at the hooded stranger.

The young man stepped aside, and while Kyle took a circle around the lamp post, I made a swing for the stranger. He ducked under my fist, and shot back up with a projected upper-cut, but Kyle had read the move before he could strike, and countered by quickly jamming his elbow down into the stranger's shoulderblade, thus stopping him mid-punch.

A car door opened beside us, and swung out purposefully, smacking me in the side before I could register the movement. I took a couple gulps of air to make sure I was breathing properly, and before I could wonder exactly how we were going to maneuver our way around whoever it was that stepped out, Kyle quickly jumped onto the hood of the car to avoid what I noticed at that very second was a strike.

The person who'd stepped out was definitely a part of the GSM, clad in black, wearing Infra-Red goggles, and armed with a strange coil of what looked like rope, but had the sheen of a hard metal. I didn't exactly want to figure out what that coil was or why the man had it. Two other men had emerged from behind other cars in the lot, with similar metal ropes attached to their utility belts.

"Can I get a check-in?" I heard Red Serge ask over the wire. "Bebe? Kenny? Kyle…?"

"On the move," Bebe's answer came through first. That was a relief.

"Only slightly fucked, maybe," was Kenny's answer. "Definitely fucked if this bitch has backup."

"We're a little too public," Kyle added. "Anyone wanna step in, on duty, now'd be a nice time…"

"Now, now, is backup really necessary?" asked the hooded man, taking another swing at me.

I kicked the car door closed, and had just enough time to punch the hooded man in the gut before swerving to miss a blow to the head that the first Infra-Red attempted against me. "Kind of a hypocritical question, don't you think?" I mocked him. "Bet you feel pretty smart to've outnumbered us."

"Only by a margin," the stranger corrected me. "Besides, I've got another mission to fulfill tonight." He got in a punch to my sternum, which once again disrupted my breathing.

As I was recovering my breath that time, Kyle called out, "Overhead!"

I glanced up to see that an Infra-Red woman had made her silent way to the roof of the car, a length of that coil taut in her fists. With few options to avoid it, I grabbed onto the rope and pulled, thus yanking the woman down from off the car. I hurled her into the lamp post, into which she collided with a loud _clang_ that echoed through the lot. The vibration alone, apparently, was enough to set off the alarm of a nearby car.

The loud droning of a repetitive horn filled the lot, but the GSM members were not at all, it seemed, concerned with being found out. And I didn't have much of a chance to get a look around for a place to run before the first man was taking a strike at me again. I feinted and doubled back, now pretty worked up for not being Toolshed at the moment, and when I glanced up at Kyle, I knew he was on the same mode of thought.

He'd been smart to get up on the hood of that car, even if it did expose him further, since he had a better view of where our escape routes could be, and had a quick advantage to push back one of the approaching Infra-Red men, who had grabbed out his own coil of metallic rope and had taken a lunge for, quite specifically, Kyle's wrist.

Kyle crouched and took a chance slash at the rope with both of his knives. He grinned when it cut through, then slammed his hands down on the car hood for balance and crouched down to kick the man right in the neck. As soon as the man went down, Kyle shouted over at me, "Stan! We've gotta move!"

The car alarm blared louder, and I saw a figure exiting the restaurant on the left-hand side of the parking lot, probably out to silence his vehicle.

"No shit, but where're we going?!" I yelled over the alarm in a panic. The man I'd been avoiding grabbed out a gun, and cocked it toward my forehead.

"STAN!"

I yelped, grabbed the man's wrist fast and shoved his arm above his head so that the shot went skyward, slammed my foot down on his, and managed to maneuver my fingers around his such that I could wrestle the gun from his grip. I didn't turn the gun on him, but I disassembled the thing fast, then shoved the rounds and empty weapon into separate pockets of my pants.

Kyle was off the hood of the car in seconds, and no sooner had I pocketed the weapon than Kyle had shoved one of his knives deep into the man's side. I saw him breathe for a three-count, then Kyle turned and tossed the Infra-Red man back toward the car. Just as the body exploded.

"Oh, fuck!" I yelped.

The car the man had initially emerged from was caught in the conflagration, and as soon as the shadow darted out of the man's body, the car engine caught, and the vehicle went up in flames. The engine burst, and a tower of fire and smoke lapped up at the sky. Clouds were gathering overhead, and the distant rumblings of thunder, underneath that persistent car alarm, gave me hope that the flames would all be doused by natural forces here soon enough, but I had really been hoping we could avoid too much of a public spectacle. Especially since, you know, we were pretty much just bystanders right now.

Sweat gathered on my forehead. Kyle and I made a dash for another nearby car and ducked behind it to avoid any blasted shrapnel from the exploded vehicle. "New plan," Kyle panted. "We get back to Token's car." I nodded. "Now."

"The guy in the hood?" I wondered.

"Shit. Hey," Kyle asked into the wire. "Can someone get on that guy?"

"Everything relatively okay?" Marpesia asked.

"We can't really stick around to find out, if you can understand that," Kyle complained.

"Yeah. Get changed, guys. You've got backup coming, unless he's already there."

"Yeah? Who is—"

Another explosion sounded from the middle of the lot, followed by a voice I slightly recognized giving a startled yelp. Oh, wait… oh, shit, I did know that voice. I beckoned Kyle to stand up with me, and we peered around the car to notice that the man who'd emerged from the restaurant to shut the alarm off of his car was none other than Craig Tucker's tall, Ginger-haired father.

The explosion had happened nowhere near the car, which finally shut up just as a figure appeared, silhouetted by the flames, to pull Mr. Tucker out of harm's way. "Get back inside." Endgame. Well, that was bound to be an interesting conversation for him.

Craig's father stumbled back, and turned to return to the restaurant, then said, "Hold on a minute. Just what's even going on? Who are you?"

Endgame did not answer.

Nearby us, an Infra-Red man rolled out from underneath a parked car. His goggles glowed, and he clicked a switch on the side of the ocular device, saying, "Match confirmed. Targets A and F in place."

Wasn't much of a stretch of the imagination to guess that Kyle might be Target A. Once he and I were in silent agreement on that outcome, Kyle pressed his lips flat together, steeled himself, and ran out from behind the car. Yes, if we went back out we'd be putting ourselves at risk, but better that than have Craig's cover blown in front of his father. One discovered identity like that could lead to a string of others.

Before the man on the ground could stand up, Kyle slammed him back down with his right foot between the man's shoulderblades. "Not today," he said. I clicked the stunner out from the contraption on my left wrist, charged the weapon, took aim, and as soon as Kyle jumped out of the way, shot the man in the neck. The sting hit, and the man was out of commission immediately.

We only had two ways to run, and I really didn't want to head toward the main street. "Come on," I said, ticking my head toward our previous route.

"Sir, I don't want to have to tell you again," Endgame tried as our sprint drew us back toward the action before we could fully make a break for it. "Go inside."

"Hold on," said Mr. Tucker, "you're one of those League guys, aren't you?"

_"YES,"_ our teammate emphasized harshly. "So you'd better understand that we're in the middle of a serious threat, here, and that you need to leave. Now."

"What about my car?"

Endgame sighed. "I'll certainly try to make sure it remains in one piece."

Only slightly satisfied, Mr. Tucker surveyed the scene once more before backing up and rushing back into the restaurant. The hero watched to be sure that his father had made it out of the current struggle, and then, appeased, turned back just in time to swerve out of the way of an attempted strike by one of our opponents.

There were now only four Infra-Reds in the lot, and I was sure any second now we'd be hearing sirens, since there was no way someone in one of the buildings nearby wouldn't have called in that car explosion. The burning vehicle smelled awful, too, and my eyes stung as we found ourselves running through some of the smoke, which billowed around in the constantly shifting wind.

I saw lightning flash in the distance. Wouldn't be a clear night much longer.

"You fuckers want a spectacle, or what?" Endgame shouted out at the Ginger men in the lot.

Actually… more than likely, they did. If the hooded man had alluded to an act…

No time to think about that, no time. We had to re-locate that hooded person, and, well, clean up after some netherworldly explosions. That kind of thing.

Just as a man was approaching Endgame from behind, Kyle and I were able to rush in and pull our companion out of the way. Endgame spun around, planted his feet, shouted, "DOWN!" and pulled off his sunglasses in order to send a laser shot at the man, who then went up in flames. The others were instantly on us, though, the second the sunglasses went back on.

"What the hell are you guys still doing here?" Endgame asked us.

"Dude, we've been trying to leave!" Kyle exclaimed, as he punched a man down.

"Well, now's a good time. I've got this."

"You sure?" I wondered.

"Yup. Move."

Kyle ducked to avoid the man's retaliating punch, and I guided him out of the way as Endgame went down to trip the man with a low kick. He then slid his twin swords out from their holsters on his back, sprang up into a handstand in time to kick down another approaching GSM member, and had his swords at the ready for whoever else would cross him now that he was back on his feet.

"Yeeeah, I'd say he's fine," Kyle decided as the two of us took off the way we'd come.

"These guys are really not fucking afraid to go right ahead and attack around civilians, huh?" I worried aloud.

Kyle shook his head. "Tonight's their 'recruitment night,' remember?" he noted. "They wanna make an example of someone."

"Oh. Fuck, you're right."

"Hopefully. So now we can avoid i—_FUCK."_

Kyle held an arm out to get me to take an abrupt stop with him. We'd made it back to the back corner of the Tenth Circle, only to have run directly into the path of yet another black-clad man wielding one of those coils of strange rope. Kyle and I had few options but to press back to back; another similarly armed man had appeared from seemingly out of nowhere, near Kyle's side.

"Okay," Kyle complained aloud for the Infras' benefit, "I'll bite. What's the point, guys? You on a recruitment mission, or what?"

"You could say that," said the man that Kyle faced directly.

"For what?"

"The Carnival."

Oh?

"Carnival's a front, isn't it?" I added, holding out my stunner as a warning for the man nearest me. "A front that doesn't even fucking exist."

"Does it?" said the man, with hardly any inflection. "Are you in a position to deign what exists and what does not?"

Kyle scoffed out a slight laugh. "Don't even get me started," he said. "Existentialism's interesting, I'll give you guys that."

"And you are the very man we'll be needing," the man nearest him said, also on a flat tone. "With that method of thinking, you'll do well to help us continue building."

"You've been blackmailing," I noted. "Kidnapping. What's your game now?"

Apparently, brute force.

The men both lunged, ropes at the ready. I took a shot and missed; Kyle struck out only for his target to dodge. The worst of it was, I began thinking as I had to push away from Kyle in order to step out of the way of a strike from the approaching man in black, that an even worse struggle was still going on inside the coffee shop. For all we knew, Kenny and Clyde could be cornered.

And just where had Damien gone off to? It was easy for me to forget about the man orchestrating everything. Kenny had been able to speak to him, sure, but until the rest of us learned exactly what he'd spilled, we were in the dark. I was getting a little restless.

The man feinted and stepped behind me.

When I spun back around, the face that my fist nearly collided with was Kyle's. I reared back, stumbling over myself somewhat, and clicked out the small stunner on my right to hold it out and charge it for a sting against the men who were now holding Kyle back.

Fuck. My heart jumped up into my throat, and for a second, my vision went blurry. Yes… okay, yes, we knew that Kyle was one of the primary targets for the GSM, and tonight was enough to convince both of us that it was indeed his ability—his 'act'—that they were after, but it would be an understatement to say I was pissed that those fucks were going the kidnapping route with him.

With my now-stabilized footing, I'd have a clear shot at both of them. And shit, did I want to take it.

Kyle wasn't putting up a struggle, though, which was interesting. He could have broken from their grip if he wanted to…

The streetlights flickered.

Ah. I trusted him enough to know what he was doing, no matter how uncomfortable I was with the situation. Kyle wouldn't just pull that trick out; not at this stage of the game, not when we knew we had backup.

Unfortunately, so did they.

"Let him go," I commanded.

"Amazing that a young man such as yourself could get a pistol into a function like this," one of the Infras chided me with a forced, crinkled grin.

"I'm not interested in talking," I said firmly. "I'm asking nicely. Let. Him. Go."

"Watch where you're pointing that thing, boy," the other man sneered. "Wouldn't want anyone figuring you out."

"What do you want from me?" Kyle asked, without turning to look at them. He kept his eyes on me, so that if it came down to it, we could come up with a plan without words.

"Just to talk."

Kyle snorted, displeased. "Kind of a dreary night for a talk," he mocked the two. "Let's take a rain check."

"Would you?" one of the men asked, almost hopefully.

_Should I?_ Kyle asked me with his expression. I glanced off to my right and then back with a blink to indicate, _No._ If he set up a meeting with them, the whole League could find ourselves charged with more than we could handle. Kyle glanced down to indicate that he understood.

"Look," I snapped, "let him go and I won't shoot."

The men laughed. And that was when the rest came. Out of nowhere, a high-heeled black boot kicked the stunner out of my hands, and a fist came at my face. Acting on reflex, I reached out with my left hand and in less than a second my hand had grabbed an arm. A Ginger woman's face came into view, eyes obscured by her infrared goggles, and when she went for a headbutt, I stopped her—my right hand covered her face, and I grabbed on, digging my fingers into her skin and hair. She bit my palm, but I kneed her in the ribs and tossed her aside.

No sooner had I done that than men were on me from either side. I grabbed out my second stunner and shot the one on my left, but the man on my right got in a pretty awful blow to the side of my skull, which got my head spinning.

"Stan!" I heard Kyle holler out. He'd made it sound desperate, but I knew better. He just wanted to get my attention.

Shaking my head to get the world to stop tilting and fading in and out of focus, I managed to catch sight of him as the first two Infra-Reds began dragging him away down the street, arms crossed and locked behind his back with that thick metal coil. He glanced over his shoulder at me, and before the Infras could notice, he mouthed back to me, _I'll be fine._

I was furious, though. Somehow, I had to go after him.

And he certainly gave me permission. The next thing he mouthed was, _Fight,_ a look of solid determination on his face. I nodded, then spun around to cuff my attacker across the face with the edge of the stunner.

I shot the man in the collarbone and heard footsteps rushing toward me. Quickly, I looked back, noticed another woman heading my way, and when she sprang up for a high kick, I ducked down only to buck back up as soon as her shoulders were in line with mine. I hit her hard in the small of her back and sent her careening into the wall behind me, just as a third man opened fire at me from behind a dumpster.

Rolling down out of the way, I fired back with the stunner, but it didn't have the best long range accuracy. He easily avoided my shots and sent back a volley of bullets of his own. I hit the ground and heard a bullet sail past my ear and hit the telephone pole on the street, causing a slight splinter of wood.

No way could I keep this shit up on my own.

Luckily, I didn't have to. When the man took aim to fire again, I heard the revving of a familiar engine, and bright headlights flooded the area. The man let out a startled yelp at having been suddenly blinded, which gave me enough time to search the ground for a better weapon.

Found it. On the unconscious body of my first attacker were two throwing knives. Used to attacking through Mysterion's flares and the brights of the League's SUV fairly consistently, I grabbed up the throwing knives and hurled one straight at the man with the gun.

I had aimed for a non-lethal target area on his body as all of us always did, but, just as we'd been seeing in the previous attacks, the man, upon contact with the sharp object, burned into ash on the spot.

"SUV's unlocked for ten seconds," Red Serge said into my wire, giving me no time to contemplate the odd nature of our current enemies. "Care to fill us in?"

Not wasting a breath, I yanked open the driver's side door of the car, locked it again, turned off the headlights, and stumbled into the back, where the auxiliary lights came on automatically. A quick glance around let me find my own small, locked box of gear. As I slid out my keys and began to yank off my formal attire, all I could spit out was, "They've got Kyle."

"Shit," I heard the Guardian Angel growl out first.

"Damn it, can we get someone on that?" Kenny commanded.

"I'm tracking them," said Endgame.

"Wait, wait," I said, panicked, "what about the parking lot?"

"Murphy showed up at the lot so I'm free." I got out a slight sigh of relief. I'd shoved my collared shirt and formal jacket into the chest, now down to my Toolshed shirt and under armor. Changing pants and shoes in a dimly-lit SUV and in a panic wasn't the easiest thing ever, but I managed to do it quickly. "Yeah; they're movin' fast. Whoever they are, they're on a mission and I think they kinda just achieved it."

"Stay on them," Angel commanded. "Keep us posted."

"On it."

"Stan, what's your—" Red Serge started.

By this point, I'd fully changed. I buckled my toolbelt, strapped my sledgehammer into place across my back, and did a quick smear of charcoal around my eyes and a swift muss of my hair before sliding on my gloves and goggles and heading out from the back. "I'm in," I said, lowering my tone. "Can I get a lock on the car?"

"You're out of it?"

"And hitting the fucking ground running once it's locked," I confirmed.

"Five seconds." I began booking it down the street, satisfied with the flash of headlights that spilled out and shifted shadows behind me once Red Serge had made good on the lock request.

"Head through town toward the docks," Endgame instructed me. "Easiest route."

"How'd you even catch up so fast?" I wondered.

"Cops."

"Right."

I had to wonder, though: why the South Park Docks? I mean, sure, one of the paintings inside the Tenth Circle depicted a river. The paintings were our breadcrumbs, and I had the distinct feeling that the GSM wasn't going to elaborate much. Their vagueness, possibly having to do with the fact that most of them were copies of real human lives, disturbed me.

My stomach flipped when I remembered that we were up against clones, and I quickened my pace. Not being fully on a League mindset all night had made the fine details scramble around in my head a little. Copies—they were all copies. And right now, they had the only one of us who could instinctively tell real from fake; living from mere animated object.

I was sure that Kyle would be fine, that he could hold his own, that he could fucking _out-conversation_ those assholes if need be, but I was not going to end my night before getting him the hell away from those freaks.

They were not going to use him in that 'building' they were talking about. They were not going to use him as a code for more copies. They weren't taking him, and they weren't taking Red either. Period.

It didn't take me long to catch up to Endgame. In fact, I passed him without awareness, and the next thing I knew, he was pulling me back and down behind a row of blue post boxes. After a hurried glance to make sure it was him, I asked in a hushed tone, "What's up?"

"Interrogation or something," said Endgame, peeking around the side of one of the boxes. "Check it out."

I peered around the boxes on the other side, following the line of Endgame's gaze. Right there in the middle of an in-development cul-de-sac were the two Infras from earlier, each man still with a firm grip on both of Kyle's arms. I took a good look at what they were using to keep him tied back—it was that coil that appeared fairly strong, but the fact that there was no lock proved to me that it could be broken. It was probably just a strong rope, or possibly an alloy. Kyle's knives had gone through it earlier, and I'd cut through stronger. My awl could take it. That tool, in Gary Harrison's own words, was sharp as a diamond. And I trusted my technician's every syllable.

"Well, well," I heard the nasal voice of the hooded young man say from above us.

"Fuck," Endgame grunted.

I thought to directly address the stranger, but held my tongue and instead made a subtle grab for my flathead screwdriver. The young man noticed, based on the way he cocked his shrouded head, and let out a light laugh. "Easy, easy," he coaxed me. "We've got ourselves a real fighter. I knew what would get you, Toolshed. You're too simple."

"I'll show you simple," I growled, shifting so that I was glancing up at the young man. He was poised on the post boxes, crouched down with his hands gripping the smooth edge of a centrally-positioned box.

"Oh, but I've seen you at your best already," that nasal voice mocked me. "I've seen you at your worst, as well."

He slipped down from the post boxes, disappearing into the shadows of the street behind us. My heart jumped, and just as I was glancing around to catch sight of him again, I felt a cold hand on the top of my head.

Shaking, I glanced up again. This time, a blade blocked half of my vision. Endgame had pulled a sword on the guy, fed up with his interruption; my comrade still had an eye on Kyle's situation, but I knew his aim well enough to be sure that if the hooded man tried anything funny, he wouldn't have an arm much longer.

He didn't do much of anything, though. He simply patted my head, and said, grimly, "So sorry to disturb your harmony."

He then eased the sword away, and took off down the street again, in the direction of the docks.

When I started breathing more evenly again, I moved closer to Endgame and peered back at the cul-de-sac, where one of the Infras was now circling Kyle, attempting to get him to spill something.

"What'd he mean by that?" Endgame wondered.

"What?"

"The thing about disturbing something…"

Disturbing harmony. I shivered. I hated the way those guys spoke. This person in the dark hood especially.

The scary thing was, I was starting to understand their methods. Bits of them, anyway. The logistics.

Dreams exist between life and death. They are the products of an unconscious mind. For some, that place is more terrifying than it is for others. I was beginning to worry that my own brush with death would subject me to nightmares forever.

Kyle understood, though. I had been adopting more and more of his passion—quest, even—for logic, and honestly, it had been helping me through the strange dreams I'd been having. We balanced each other… but that couldn't have been what the hooded man was getting at, right? Still, balance and harmony are kind of synonymous, I figured. And I got that this group had an obsession with the illogical, which neither of us could deny was a tangible threat…

Wait…

No, it had nothing to do with a personal balance. Not this time around, anyway. Yes, they were calling us out individually. Yes, they seemed to be finding just the right buttons to push for each of us in the League…

But by 'harmony,' that little fucker was being _blatant._ It had nothing to do with me at all.

I switched on my wire. "Agent Harmony," I said sternly. "What's your location?"

"Toolshed?" her cautious voice came back through. "I'm at the docks. Cops said somethin' weird was spotted down here. Why?"

My chest tightened. "Shit," I muttered. "Hold on, you might need backup. Whatever happens, keep your wire live at all times, you hear me?"

"Why, what—"

"Trust me on this."

"Toolshed, what's going on?!"

I took in a deep breath. "The target we were after is heading your way. I just—I think I know who that guy is," I realized. "And if I'm right, I don't really know what to believe anymore."

Dreams exist between life and death.

Circles tie every plane of existence together in one way or another. I had seen the dead rise before. I had witnessed Immortality, death, Purgatory, and personal nightmares.

I thought, for a moment, as I peered back at the 'conversation,' about Kyle's ability. If what he could do was re-direct gravity, who was to say that someone with even greater power couldn't re-direct reality itself?

– – –

_Butters_

It is, at times, a very unfortunate thing that I happen to be a firm believer in fate. I believe that it can be a positive force, so long as a person is aware of it and is willing to take risks and make changes necessary to taking charge of fate, rather than becoming a victim of it.

I got the highest marks in my sophomore year philosophy class. The professor _loved_ me. I felt like I could hardly take credit for my work, though. All I did was write from experience.

Lately, as always, I had been thinking a lot about fate. The issue of Hell rising to our plane of existence was naturally worrisome, and it did not help that, despite or possibly due to my other beliefs, I never put much firm stock in the notion of divine intervention. Thus it was that I found myself closely watching the Guardian Angel that night. When clouds began to roll in to cover the stars in that night's sky, she did not budge. Her diligent eyes were ever on the streets below us. No matter where on the rooftop she stood, the moonlight seemed to shine off of her angel wing barrette.

I had to admire her. She never gave off the impression that she might be nervous. She did not falter when she knew her brother might be in danger. And he was indeed a primary target. We knew that much.

So it stood to reason that she did not falter when he called to her for backup.

The Guardian Angel was the first one to head down into the coffee shop, while Marpesia and Endgame escorted Bebe and Red to Bebe's car. TupperWear and the Coon kept watch with me on the perimeter of the building for a while, but first one, and then the other were called in as well, which got me really nervous, since… sure, Clyde and Kenny were probably a couple of the best-equipped team members to be fighting out of persona, but for them to need three others—?

Just what was going on in there? I was never too big a fan of the Goths in town, but for goodness' sake, couldn't one of them touch base with me now that I was the only one on guard? Couldn't they, as the owners of that building, kinda… do something? Or maybe they were completely indisposed.

So I held my ground.

Until Red Serge called me with an update from the police scanner.

At least Murphy was doing his job. That was pretty much all we could have hoped for. What that meant about Yates and the rest of the force, I didn't know, nor was I currently in a position to guess, so I just had to trust that Murphy still had a few good cops on our side and was answering the right calls.

"Strange activity reported at the South Park Docks." That was all the information I was given, but it was all I really needed.

Something about that upset me. I rarely visited the docks nowadays. Heck, I hadn't been there in ages. None of us really frequented that area of town, honestly. But if there was a call to head on out there…

I had such an awful feeling.

Worry tugged at me a little, but I shook it away. I did not leave until Marpesia returned to her position to keep watch over the outside of the Tenth Circle. "What'd I miss?" she wondered.

I shook my head. "They're all in there, Endgame's with Stan and Kyle, and I've got… something I've gotta do," I told her.

Marpesia looked me up and down with scrutiny. Underneath the sharp edges of her Roman helmet, hidden by her black half-mask, her normally kind eyes became unchangeably stern. Wendy's friendly concern was replaced with Marpesia's stone-cold seriousness. She read every side of every situation, and was in a constant mode of both defense and willingness to attack. "Do you need me to go with you?" she asked.

Even though I had the chance to say yes, we both knew I'd decline. Marpesia even wanted me to. I was still more or less in the mode of being tested by the League, after all. Harmony had been working out for me, so far. I tapped into Marjorine when I was feeling supremely benevolent; I became Agent Harmony when I knew that there was a fair amount of healing I could do. I liked having that be the new third part to me. A layer of balance.

Marpesia respected that. And she was allowing me this outlet to take on a personal mission. I'd only gone out on co-ops thus far. This was my thing; this was my biggest chance to make an individual contribution to the mission.

"I'll be fine," I assured my closest friend in the League. "If you can do something, anything, to get Mosquito and Mysterion on the field, that'd probably be best."

"I'll do just that," Marpesia promised. "Check in soon."

"Don't worry."

With that, I made my way toward the docks.

It wasn't the easiest or fastest commute ever, but I kept to the dark corners of the streets and kept a steady pace. _Strange activity_ could mean just about anything, but I had a feeling that Red Serge wouldn't be giving me an assignment that was unrelated to the events of that particular evening.

My first thought was Scott Tenorman.

I had studied that man before. As Chaos. He was… kind of fascinating, to be honest. A high-functioning madman. He was meticulous, but neglectful. His weakness was his one-track mind. But this time around—where was he hiding?

He'd taken such care to send letters to Liane Cartman for so long. I wondered just how much he'd known about her tie to Damien. If he had been saving that information, the way he'd been hiding the truth about Eric's father.

If there was still more in Tenorman's brain that we had yet to discover. And when that bastard would show himself.

Not tonight. I had the feeling I wouldn't be seeing him directly tonight… but that I might have the chance to get closer. Closer to the source of this—this self-made madness. This wasn't the kind of arcane terror the Old Ones had wanted. No, this was just pure and utter—

Well. Pure and utter…

I pressed on.

The water was calm when I approached the docks. There was a soothing lull to the way that it lapped at the algae-covered wood, a balmy scent to the air hovering around the simple wooden structures at which a few small boats were tied for the night. It smelled like the hazy calm before rain; stillness mixed in with subtle wafts of boat engine gasoline.

But at the same time, the air did not reek of stillness. Something was off. I half expected some kind of monster to emerge from the water, the calm was so disturbing.

Turns out the monster didn't emerge from the depths that night, however. No… he approached from town.

I concealed myself the second I heard the footsteps. I clambered up to the top of a shack with the help of a stack of cargo crates for some of the leisure fishing boats. With so many clouds overhead, and every electric light at a lower height than the tin roof I'd now claimed, I was safe from being immediately spotted. I lowered myself so that my chest was pressed against the wavy, uneven roof, but so that I could still peer over the fishing shack in order to watch the figure approach from town.

He was young, that was the first thing I noticed. Early teens. The body structure gave it away, even though I could not see his face behind the black hood he wore. I swallowed back a bit of bile. Did those guys really have to go all out with the Hell thing? I wondered. Sure looked like a reaper to me.

He approached the shack, and I made my breath still. I had no idea why I was hiding from this guy. My gut was telling me I needed to. That something awful might happen if I didn't play this safe.

The young man lifted the top off of one of the crates that had given me a boost up onto the roof, and extracted from it a burlap sack. He carefully then placed the top plank back on the wooden box, and held up the sack to study it.

There was a head-sized bulge at the bottom, but I saw no blood. My first thought was that there had to be a human head in that sack. But if there was no blood, maybe it was a piece of one of the Ginger copies? A piece of something…

The young man looked up at the sky, and held a palm to the clouds as if to test for rain. As if he could not wait for the storm to begin. He did not seem eager. He was just simply there.

After a moment of silence between him and the sky, he lowered the sack to the ground, and began to whistle. He was horribly out of tune, and could barely even make the right sound. It was no distinct tune that he was attempting, just a note here and there, just a beat to keep himself busy by.

Though he did begin to sing more or less the notes he'd tried: _"Circle up, now, step right in…"_

He sounded awfully pleased with himself. His nasal voice was not cut out for singing, though. It made my ears burn.

Because I knew it.

Cautiously, cautiously, I began to sneak toward the edge of the roof. It wasn't easy keeping quiet, but I kept my breath still and steady, and moved when the boy sang a lyric. A boy. Yes, he was just a boy. He needed to take off that damned hood. I had to confirm…

And hadn't Toolshed just speculated…?

Closer, closer to the edge… carefully, carefully…

I hit a wobbly tile, and my right hand slipped. I bit back a yelp and tried to correct my position, but I was too late. Just as the boy had extracted the object from the burlap sack, I fumbled and eventually crashed down onto the crates I'd just climbed. I smacked into the top box pretty hard, and rolled my way down the stack. Two were knocked out of alignment, and I followed after, landing hard on my stomach on the hard wooden dock.

"Ow," I couldn't help but spit out. I was so mad at myself for losing my grip at such a time. Sure, I can be on the clumsy side during the day, but that had no place in the League. Not for the person who—aw, dangit, I'd completely forgotten to lay a trap…

I lifted my head first. The boy wasn't laughing at me, even though I'd certainly expected him to start. No, all he'd done was stand. Stand, and approach me. He ticked his hooded head to the side, then crouched and held out his right hand.

"Here," he offered. "Let me help you."

I shirked back, and scrambled to my feet on my own. Fumbling for my utility belt, I grabbed out a gun and pointed it toward the young man, who still sat crouched in his position. "Touchy," he said with a click of his tongue. "I hadn't quite expected this of you. You've changed. Regressed, even."

I frowned down at him. "Regressed?" I cocked the gun.

"This sneaking and stumbling around hardly suits you," said the hooded boy. He stood, and turned back to his opened sack.

"I'll tell you what suits me," I said firmly. "Fighting for what's right. Being a good person. Balance."

"Harmony?"

"Take your hood off," I commanded. "I have my reasons for living life the way I do. I—"

"All you have are excuses."

"Take your hood off and let me see your face!" I shouted.

The boy knealt. He picked up the object that had been in the burlap sack, and when he turned around, I felt like lightning had struck my heart and stopped it.

I had chosen Harmony as a way of redeeming myself. To inspire balance in others, to bring it into my own life. No more destruction; I'd had enough of that, I didn't need it. No more chaos.

No more Chaos.

But the boy was holding a familiar helmet.

Not one of polished metal. Not one covered in scars and the dust of the long lost city of R'lyeh. No, a very, very simple one. Childish in design, it was a helmet I knew all too well.

I had made it when I was nine years old.

Crudely fashioned of paper and tinfoil, that helmet had been a costume, a source of escape for me as a child. It had been buried, along with other playthings, in the depths of the closet in the room I used to sleep in at my parents' house. A building I had not set foot in for over four years.

But there was no mistaking that object. That was mine.

That was the first, the very first incarnation of Professor Chaos.

The part of me that had died. Right after I had witnessed the true death of the young man who had betrayed me, who had played me into a dark corner and made me a vessel for evil. There was no room in my world anymore for Chaos and Disarray.

Why…?

"Where did you get that?" I demanded.

"From the source." The young man laughed, and fitted the crude helmet onto his own head. Then, displeased, he removed the helmet. And then removed his hood.

His face was hideous. Scarred. Red. Melted away. His skin was molded at an angle, nerves and tissue were exposed underneath the awful, uneven scar that marred his features.

But he could grin. And his teeth were too, too white.

I cringed. I couldn't help it. I felt as though a cavernous space had opened up inside me.

Stay calm, I told myself. Stay balanced. Temperate.

_Temperate?_ No—how could I stay calm in the eye of such an insatiable tempest?

The water lapped at the docks.

I could hear thunder in the distance, rolling in over the mountains.

"You're dead," I heard myself speak.

"Harmony?" Toolshed. Shit. My wire was still on; I'd forgotten. "Who are you talking to?"

"You're dead…" I repeated in a heavy whisper.

_"Who are you talking to?"_

The grinning anomaly set the helmet on his off-kilter shoulders. "Dead," he agreed with me, "yes. And the servant of Hell you could have been."

"Is that supposed to sound inviting?" I said numbly.

"I am only stating facts."

"Why are you here?!"

"Because you need me."

"NO."

"Harmony!" Toolshed interrupted again. "Who is it? I'll send Endgame over—"

"Dis…"

"Harmony?"

_"Disarray."_

The scars were those that Toolshed himself had burned into the young man's face. Poison, from the blood of an ancient creature, had distorted the Ginger-haired boy's features. General Disarray, the adopted persona of a troubled boy named Dougie, had been poisoned, maimed, and ultimately eaten by the Crawling Chaos, Nyarlathotep. Eaten. Died.

General Disarray was dead.

Dead little red-haired boy…

Who had apparently risen with the son of the Devil…

"Don't tell me you did this…"

He shrugged. "I can't really take credit. But Damien did need an army. I just happen to be in a position to coerce a man I share much in common with…"

"Scott Tenorman," I added for him. Accusations were hardly necessary. Disarray. He'd been there with me, all those years ago, when as a little kid playing supervillain I had started sneaking around the asylum and reading some of Tenorman's mail, noting that he sent so many letters to Mrs. Cartman.

Disarray knew. He knew of the GSM, of the Ginger uprising that Eric had attempted as a kid. He knew of Scott Tenorman's quest for revenge. And he'd taken that knowledge to his untimely grave.

"You… disgusting little…" I began, feeling my fingers tighten around the gun. He had sent those letters. He'd done the dirty work.

Dying had freed that sick young man. Now… I had no idea if we could do anything to destroy him. He had moved beyond. He was the very nightmare he had been working toward, his entire life.

What is it about nightmares that fascinates mankind?

What is it about fear that keeps us moving?

_Why can we not outrun it?_

Running is seen as cowardice. But I was not running, no, I had _buried_ my past, held my pace, lifted my head and changed my course. The mist had cleared and I had become a healer. A force for _good._

The Tower lay in shambles.

I had buried the burden.

Buried it, buried it, buried it—not sown it into the ground so that it could take new root and return again with a change of season.

Dead. That side of me was dead. Laid to rest.

But that is not dead which can—

_NO—_

Eternal lie—

"I am the Way into the City of Woe," said Dougie. Disarray. Dead, dreadful Disarray. He glowered at me from across the dock, then removed the childish helmet away from his burnt, abhorrent head and set it carefully onto the splintered wood at his feet. "The Way to Eternal Darkness."

With a flourish of his pale, pale hands, Disarray let go of the helmet. The tinfoil gleamed in the—

That wasn't moonlight.

Thunder grumbled in the distance like a hungry beast, and lightning had flashed across the sky. The wind screamed through the trees and over the shallow water—as the air became moist with the onset of rain, the wind blew my hair out of its tight bun. Strands clung to my neck and face with the threatening drizzle of humid, heartless raindrops.

I could not escape.

A circle.

"Did you really think that you had potential to open only one Gate, Leopold Butters Stotch?" Disarray mocked me.

"Don't do this to me," I warned him. "I act as Harmony now. Not Chaos."

"Two sides of one coin, Stotch," Disarray said, lowering his tone. With a last grin, he added, "Save that coin for the Ferryman, won't you? Storms will come and rivers will flow. We shall build the new Between."

That said, he drew out a small object from his pocket and tossed it toward me. Without thinking, I dropped the gun and caught it.

A coin?

No—a token.

A prize token, from a carnival.

"It's always a gamble with the Devil, you know. When the bridges are built, use that to cross. I know you'll make the wise choice in the end."

Disarray turned, and pulled the hood up over his head.

"Idle hands are indeed the Devil's playground."

A flash of lightning.

"We'll be waiting."

When the sky flashed yet again, and the rain came pouring down, Disarray was gone. A short gust of wind knocked the crude tinfoil helmet over, and blew it across the dock and into the water, where it floated on the unquiet surface.

Shivering, I knealt to pick up my gun. As I set it into my belt, I held up the coin the dead man had tossed to me, and studied both sides. On one side was carved, by human hands, the GSM insignia. On the other, a pressed Roman numeral: _VII._

Threats. Nothing but threats. Threats that I had the power to ignore.

So why the fuck did I feel like fate still needed to play this awful, awful game with me?

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Aaahhh! Hello again after a couple of weeks! Sorry for the slightly delayed post, too, eep... Thanks so much for sticking with this story, it really means a lot to us~ :3 Due to a crazy work schedule (this is what happens when you're a working actor, hahaha… life choices…), I think we are going to make the shift to an every-other week schedule, or at least take one more skipped-week hiatus to get us back on track. Thank you for your patience! ^^ Hopefully in the fall we can go back to once-per-week.

But this part, aaahhh I'm so excited about~ Chapters 8-10 all have some parts that occur simultaneously. There are reasons the past is still kinda lurking; there's still a lot of ground to cover, but we're excited to get into the later arcs for more reveals… ^^ We'll be hearing from Kenny and Kyle next time to complete this part of the arc… and then, on to the Carnival…

Thank you so much for reading! We hope you're enjoying the story. We shall see you again on **Wednesday, September 5****th****! **:3

~Jizena and Rosie Denn

– – –


	10. Ep 10: Prospector's Army

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kenny_

Somewhere in the stretch of time between being attacked by a monstrous Hellhound and being shoved out the door by my angel of a little sister, I started to make connections. It was in the pattern of the large, wolf-like dog's movement: she went for a bite whenever we neared a painting.

At first, it was just attack after attack. The beast would strike to scratch or pin us, with claws like heavy, rusted metal that, I swear, seemed like they could rip the Shadow right out from under me. I was kind of hoping she would. It was entirely in our best interests, though, to run… and not run into corners.

She took a bite at me first, when I made the corner mistake—right near the _Violence_ painting of the GSM symbol. Luckily, Clyde was open, and shot a few times into the hound's hind leg. She whirled on him, snarling; I caught my breath, ducked down, and ran underneath her, firing up at her ribs as I did.

The hound shook herself of whatever discomfort the two of us had caused, and leapt again. Clyde and I darted out of the way, after a silent understanding that we should probably not split up, at least not until we had backup and an opening that would allow us to grab our gear and let this fight fully fall into League territory.

We darted into the main room of the shop, and the hound bolted in after us. "Move!" Clyde shouted to me as I readied a gun. He was right—I wouldn't have been able to dodge in time even if I hit her, she was advancing so quickly. Grudgingly, I ran with him off to one side. The hound came colliding in, scattering furniture that had still been set out as she cleared her own path.

She turned on a sharp angle and attempted another bite as she sprang in our direction. The spacious coffeehouse suddenly felt very, very small, since this massive creature was having so little difficulty catching up with us. I did not want to get on the Goths' bad side if we happened to make some move that would almost send the whole place into oblivion, but in the moment, I was not exactly concerned about much other than keeping everyone alive, so on a quick thought, I hauled my teammate over toward the coffee bar, which we were able to duck behind as a makeshift bunker for a moment.

"Dude," Clyde hissed at me. "Where's Angel? Didn't you call her?"

"Yeah," I said, out of breath, "she's on her way. Hold on…"

"Are you not witnessing this?! I don't know if we _can—"_

The hound jumped up on top of the counter and smacked her two great front paws down on the ground between me and Clyde, causing us to scatter. I spotted a knife behind the counter and drove it into the creature's right front leg, while Clyde clambered up onto the countertop, pressed his two stunners to the nape of her neck and fired. The hound yelped and kicked out, then whacked me in the gut as she scrambled to go after Clyde.

She'd hit me hard enough to make me choke on my breath, leaving me out of commission for a few seconds. As I coughed to remind my lungs that I kinda had a job to do, here, my shadow began to wind itself around nearly anything with a hook, as if to hold me in place. I scowled at it, and yanked myself up onto my feet, only to trip forward into the counter.

I felt like I was standing in quicksand. A glance down at the ground told me that, indeed, my shadow had nestled into the other shadows cast by the multitude of objects around me, and had decided that it was not going to move away.

"Oh, we are not gonna be able to work together, are we?" I muttered at it.

Luckily, it was only concerned with keeping my feet planted, which at least allowed me to prep my guns and fire at the hound as she chased Clyde into the corner near the _Limbo_ painting. I hit the back of her head twice as she readied herself to bite him in the neck, causing her to recoil, and giving Clyde the opening to fire his stunner between her eyes.

As I should have expected, the beast then turned on me, and in a single leap was back on the counter, reared back on her hind legs to swipe down at me, but she was yanked backward and landed on her own bony spine. The floorboards cracked underneath her, and the hound scrambled to her feet just in time to get a swipe across the muzzle from the sharp finger armor of none other than the Coon.

"How ya like that?!" he exclaimed.

Well, not very much, it seemed, as the hound smacked him out of the way. He collided into the wall near the _Wrath_ painting, and the wolfish beast advanced on him, baring her teeth. The second she'd opened her mouth, the Coon grabbed her upper and lower jaws and kept them forced apart. His eyes widened, which read to me that even he was in shock that he'd managed to pull that off; before he had to strain to think of a follow-up attack, the Guardian Angel burst into action from behind an overturned table, pulling out two explosive weights from her belt pouch and slinging them at the hound.

The small bursts went off, leaving lingering singes in the beast's scraggly grey pelt. Sure, they were much stronger against just about anything than my bullets or Clyde's stings, but the hound's reaction to the tiny explosions was painful just to hear. She let out a bray of a howl that I did not think was a sound anything canine could make, and was tripped to the floor, where the Coon continued slashing at her face while the Guardian Angel darted behind the counter to stand beside me.

"Go!" she insisted, pushing me forward. "Don't just stand around, we need Mysterion!"

"I'm _trying_ to move, it's my fucking _shadow!"_ I told her in my panicked defense.

"What?"

Just as Angel was questioning the odd phenomenon, my shadow began to climb a large shelf situated at the center of the circular counter area, so that it ascended toward the ceiling. We both watched as it crept along the ducts and then stopped directly over me, winding itself into the silhouette of a noose.

Angel gasped and looked around for the rope it was mimicking—none could be found.

"Kenny, don't move," Clyde instructed me. He ran back to the counter after checking to see that the hound was still occupied with the Coon, then readied a stunner upward.

"Why?" I wondered. "What?"

As soon as I'd spoken, I felt a stiffness in my neck, as if something rough and tight really had been tied there. I thought back to the _Treachery_ painting almost a second too late. I felt a pull.

Damien really was using a nightmare from my past to try to kill me.

If Hell wanted me, as he had claimed, why not just come get me? Was I really more valuable to them dead than alive…?

Probably. Death is the only part of human life that's really immortal. Death, and the subjects of dreams…

I really did not want to find out what that 'New Between' they were planning was.

"Oh, shit…" Angel whispered. "Hold still…"

Putting her faith in a single move, she touched her left hand to my neck, above the strain. With her right hand, she then grabbed out a Roman candle she must have borrowed from my own arsenal when gearing up, stuck the butt of it in her teeth to hold it in place, clicked on a lighter with her right hand to light it up, then tossed Clyde the lighter and tossed the Roman candle up toward the ceiling.

"Shield your eyes—I mean, _bomb drop!"_ she shouted.

"Shit!" I heard the Coon yelp, at the same time Clyde ducked and covered his head.

I closed my eyes as instructed, just as the flare went off, illuminating the room with its sparks. I felt heat on my eyelids, and the strain eased up, allowing Angel to then free me from both her grip and the grip my traitor shadow had on me and push me over the counter. I tumbled forward and opened my eyes to keep me from going face-first into the floor, but Clyde and Angel were instantly hauling me to my feet.

Angel pushed me and Clyde toward the door, reiterating, "Gear up! NOW!"

When we made a run for it, the hound bounded after us. Angel and the Coon both shot at her, but the best shot came from the front. TupperWear had arrived in the doorway, and Clyde and I bolted to either side as he dislodged the shield from the back of his armor and hurled it at the massive beast, slicing open her left shoulder.

"Thanks, man!" I called back at him as I slipped out the door and into the street. "Hey, Red Serge," I asked into the wire once I noticed that Clyde had caught up, "you wanna unlock the car for us?"

"Happy to," was the answer. "Though I think you guys'll do good to take this whole thing on the road. You get that TupperWear?"

"On it as soon as I'm back out," his voice came back through the wire.

I glanced back over my shoulder to watch the action before the door could swing closed. TupperWear had positioned himself at the center of the hound's spine, and raised his shield up over his head, to crack it down between two of her vertebrae; the Coon stood at the ready, while Angel hoisted herself up onto the hound's back as well by use of the mangled tail as a swing of sorts.

"Any clue what exactly she is?" Clyde asked as the two of us ran toward the hidden car, around back.

"A Hellhound, I got that much," I told him. "These things're here and there in Hell."

"Couldn't Satan have picked something a little less toothy to have lying around?" Clyde complained. "She almost bit my head off twice."

"Guess he's not much of a cat person," I replied, tongue-in-cheek.

We were then silent until we reached the opposite side of the building. We'd left the van in the narrow drive behind the coffee shop, right next to a small loading dock for deliveries (where I'm _sure_ the Goths took smoke breaks exactly as they used to behind the elementary school all those years ago). The area was such that it was completely blocked off from view of the adjacent parking lot. It was ideal for our needs that night, as the narrow drive provided a place to conveniently park our team vehicle close enough to reach quickly if the night's mission went awry, which it obviously had, while still remaining out of public view.

"Red Serge?" Clyde spoke into the wire.

"You've got fifteen," our tech replied, and I heard the automatic locks click inside the vehicle we had almost reached.

"Make that twenty." The words came from behind us as well as echoed in the wire. I turned my head to see TupperWear running to catch up with us. He was alone.

"The others?" I asked.

"The dog-thing ran off toward the street. Angel and Coon are in pursuit, but we need all hands on the field a.s.a.p." TupperWear ran over to the driver's side of the vehicle, yanking the door open and quickly slipping inside.

Clyde and I paused at the side of the van, and exchanged glances. Neither one of us had to say it, but we were both definitely worrying about the same thing in that instant: our girlfriends. The creature had run off toward the street? Had Red and Bebe had time to get away before it had come careening out of the shop in their direction? There was definitely more than a fair share of personal interest in this mission already, and the tally just seemed to keep adding up. How much longer were we going to have to wonder what it all meant and what it was all for?

Before I could get too distracted, I felt a few drops of rain hit my face just before the passenger-side window of the van slid down, revealing TupperWear leaning over to suggest our next move. "Get in."

We did not need prompting. With the Guardian Angel the Coon chasing after the hound on foot, we'd need to catch up, and fast, especially if the beast started toward Carnival grounds. I'd find out where that fucking place was, no matter who or what tried to stop me.

Once in the back of the van, Clyde and I opened our respective chests, and I felt TupperWear hit the gas the instant my key clicked in the lock. We screeched out of hiding, zero to sixty at one heavy press of the pedal.

There were no windows in the back of the van, so Clyde and I could not see anything outside as we changed. It was definitely challenging attempting to strap on our gear while the van made really sharp turns. I had complete faith in TupperWear's driving capabilities, but he sure wasn't making it any easier for us. Every once in a while I heard him confirming directions Red Serge was feeding him over the wire.

Mosquito finished before me and maneuvered his way to sit up front in the passenger seat. By then, I could tell that we had driven a fair distance from the Goths' shop, but still not far out of that area of town. I was fastening my cape around my neck just as Mosquito pointed straight ahead to the side of the street we were currently on and shout, "There!"

His exclamation was fairly unnecessary, as the scene before us, which I could view out of the front windshield, was certainly attention-grabbing. Angel and the Coon had done a good job of keeping up with the beast. The huge creature was laying into a car parked on the side of the street, while the Coon stood on top of the damaged vehicle, slicing at the beast's snout with his extendable, incredibly sharp metal claws. The Guardian Angel was again riding on the hound's back. She had a flare in her hand, no doubt about to try and blind the creature again to disorientate her.

TupperWear hit the breaks when we were about thirty yards away. We didn't have much time to assess the situation objectively, however. Breaking character for a moment, Mosquito loudly exclaimed, "Holy shit, that's Bebe's car!"

On second glace, I realized that it was indeed the car Clyde had driven to the event that evening. They'd definitely be needing to take it in for some serious repairs the next day. But that was not even on my radar of concerns at the moment. If that was her car, that meant that Bebe was inside.

And so was Red.

"Run it over!" I growled at Token. I knew Angel could get clear before we hit.

"I can't, man, that thing'll crumple us," he replied desperately.

"Fuck," said Mosquito. Then, he pulled out the biggest shock-gun he had and stuck his head and arms out of his window, took aim, and shot that literal bitch right under the eye.

The giant she-wolf howled in pain and turned sharply, eyeing our vehicle and growling deep in her throat.

"You got her attention," said TupperWear, gripping the steering wheel with both hands.

"Then make sure it stays on us. Gun it!" I yelled. TupperWear didn't hesitate, and shifted the car into reverse just as Mosquito shot another volley at the creature for good measure. I saw the Guardian Angel do a back-flip to get clear of the best. It had apparently forgotten her, and the car with its passengers, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. Though, right after, I had to grip the sides of both front headrests so I wouldn't be flung back as the van shot forward back the way we had come. TupperWear took an alternate turn, however, fairly soon, so that we would not end up retracing our path completely.

Wanting to finally take part in the action, I asked TupperWear, "Get the roof for me, would you?" He obliged without a word and snapped the switch to slide open the sunroof. Once I could squeeze through, I hoisted myself up.

"Better hurry!" Mosquito called up at me.

No kidding. The Hound was almost on us. I drew my .45s, steadied myself on the roof, took aim—

She'd opened her mouth to bite off the hood of the car, so I fired twice down her throat. I heard TupperWear voice a rushed apology as he turned a hard right to avoid any backlash, which gave me just enough time to leap off of the car and onto the hound's snout. She tried to bite and bark, but choked on the bullets. That only seemed to make her angrier, as I should have expected. She shook her head vigorously from side to side and managed to dislodge my grip. I flew a few feet and then did a tuck-and-roll to right myself and gain my footing before she was back on me.

Thankfully, though, by that time Mosquito had managed to get out of the van and he shot again at the hound's face. It really seemed to smart when she got hit there. Good. The more this bitch hurt the better I felt. It was getting back at her for going after the girls, and doing Damien's stupid dirty-work, and being another crazy creature in a _long_ list of insanity that I'd had to deal with in my life. Let her be the one hurting instead.

While Mosquito, and then TupperWear, kept her busy for a few minutes, I saw the Coon and the Guardian Angel running toward the new fight location. "The girls?" I asked Angel.

"They're good," she confirmed, "headed back to the base." With that, we all focused our attention on the monstrous creature before us that we were hell-bent on taking down.

TupperWear had climbed up to the roof of the van, attempting to get some height on the creature, since her giant size was so hard to manage from the ground. Mosquito continued to concentrate on her face. The Coon ran around the she-beast, choosing to focus on its hind-quarters. Angel and I took a side apiece, she springing over the hound's back, while I pulled out two shuriken from my belt and sent them flying at the monstrous thing's ribcage.

We continued to fight the hound for a good ten minutes before either side showed any signs of flagging. To my pride and satisfaction, it was the giant dog that slipped first. She had been trying to leap up onto the van to get at TupperWear, who was causing her the most annoyance, seeing as how he could essentially attack her anywhere from his position. When she swung her giant front paws onto the vehicle, though, he swiped one of his metal discs sideways in front of him, so that the edge of the disc cut into the tops of her paws. She hollered and fell clumsily back onto all fours, though her front half was obviously giving her some problems with balance.

Mosquito took advantage of this opportunity to get in close for a direct attack with one of his stun-guns. His main target had been her eyes during the entire fight.

However, she surprised him and took an extended swipe at his head. Thankfully, Mosquito was able to turn his head just before she would have dealt a pretty serious blow. She did manage to just touch the side of his head, though, not enough to leave a mark, but enough to snap the string holding his mask in place.

"Shit," Mosquito said. He was too preoccupied with trying to get out of the way of the humungous, dangerous paw that was still arching downward to save his essential costume piece.

It was like I was seeing this scene play out in slow-motion. Mosquito managed to hop backward and get out of the way. I saw the beast's menacing claw snap through the string, and the recoil from the release of the tension securing it around Mosquito's head. The freed mask sailed up and forward, right into the face of the Hellhound we were fighting. It bounced off her nose, and fell to her right side. The mask then brushed against the side of her oversized features, right across the area under her eye that Mosquito had successfully shot from the van, before continuing to fall toward the pavement a good ten feet away.

I'd followed this path of movement from where I was standing. And it turned out that there was more benefit to it than witnessing a dramatic cinematic moment. Before the mask hit the ground, I saw figures behind the path it carved into the air. My eyes re-focused, and I saw a small grouping of those Infra-Reds standing on the side of the street. They were advancing.

"Spectacular," I muttered, as if a giant Hellhound wasn't enough, we also had to deal with more of the generic cockroach-like demons. "Heads up, guys," I called to my fellow heroes, "we've got some more who want to join the party."

"Oh, Goddammit," I heard the Coon curse.

"Fuck…" Clyde muttered, his voice completely unaltered without his mask. But—the firey look in his eyes, though: he was still Mosquito. No mistaking that. He reloaded his gun, cocked it to rev the stunner, and said, "Anybody got any surprise ideas?"

"We got backup?" TupperWear wondered into the wire.

"Little busy!" Marpesia checked in. "I already had to chase down a fucking pickup truck that ran Bebe off the road!"

"We've got an infestation, here," Endgame added.

And from Toolshed, "These assholes die but they don't fucking _stop!"_

Well: there were five of us. At least there was that. And Bebe was gunning it back to the base. We'd have time… we'd have time, we'd have time… Beat these fuckers, spay, neuter and slaughter that dog, and run back to make sure my girlfriend could get a good night's sleep.

"Hey, I got an idea," said the Coon, as the Infras marched forward.

"Anything would be great right now," Angel said, speaking for all of us.

The Coon grinned, glad to have the floor, as it were, and announced, "We dodge ourselves around that wolf thing."

…Damn. All right, maybe I'd once again been too harsh on the guy. He had a valid idea.

"We make _those_ assholes hit her," the Coon continued.

"Fine by me, I'd like to save some shots," Mosquito admitted.

"Right," I ordered. "Coon, you and me'll stick to the front line. Mosquito…"

"Get 'em before they come," he nodded, sidling back a few steps closer to the Hellhound, who was struggling back up onto her feet.

"Great. TupperWear?"

"I'll play nice with the dog," he said, cracking his armored knuckles.

"Nice can kiss my ass right now," I growled. "Kill the bitch."

"O_ho!_ Mysterion!" the Coon laughed.

"While we're on duo, don't fuck around with me," I added. He rolled his eyes, but complied.

TupperWear gave us a nod, and ran back to grab the she-wolf around the neck and wrestle her back to the ground. Mosquito took a shot, and the bitch rolled over, threatening to crush TupperWear, had he not leapt from her first.

"And Angel—" I started my final order.

But she was already ten steps ahead of me. A white streak sailed over the Infra group, as she darted forward, did an acrobatic leap over the first few in line, and high-jumped it into the center of the group, coming down to deal a roundhouse kick to four of the men standing tightly together two lines back.

I love my sister.

"We're only lookin' at about eighteen, here, guys, let's make this worth it!" the Guardian Angel called back.

But a call came out from the back of the Infra group that bothered me:

_"Silence the Voice of Reason!"_

I did not want to know what that meant, but I'd keep it in mind.

"You wanna play, assholes?" the Coon shouted out to the crowd. "Let's go!"

A man opened fire on him, and the Coon ducked to charge. The bullet sailed over him and into the fur of the Hellhound's chest. I glanced behind me so I knew precisely where the monster was, then pulled a _shuriken_ from my belt and rushed forward. Keeping the small weapon lodged between my knuckles, I struck out at a woman to my right, getting in a cut across her face, then bolted right into a man behind her.

He punched me in the ribs and pulled a knife on me, but the Guardian Angel darted in to pull him back. A few men advanced toward the Hellhound and I heard a few shots go off, but had my hands full when another man grabbed me around the neck. I caught and flipped him, yelling, "Incoming!" to the Coon.

The Coon stepped aside when the man I'd tossed hit the ground, and when he darted forward to claw the throat of another victim, I heard the distinct rumbling of thunder through the sky. There was a flash of lightning, off in the direction of the South Park Docks. Wasn't that where Harmony had been sent to chase down that hooded guy…? Not to give everyone else something to think about in this fight, but I did make a mental note that one or the other of us would need to locate her at some point, since she was the only one going solo at the moment.

The Guardian Angel punched down a woman who'd jumped her, and when the Infra-Red got back on her feet, I shot her down to get her off of my sister. Angel thanked me with a nod, then sped back toward where TupperWear and Mosquito still had their hands full with the Hellhound.

A few more men made it past us in an attempt to subdue the others, but the Hellhound herself provided our team too great of a shield. Shots were taken, and not one of them appeared to hit one of my teammates. This infuriated the canine, and she bit out at the clones, managing to snap a couple in half in her jaws, which only aided us further.

Light droplets fell as a haze warned of the onset of heavier rain; our opponents showed no signs of retreating. We'd done in a few, but had several to go, so the Coon and I worked closer to each other until we were shoulder to shoulder, each of us with a gun drawn. When we'd each shot down a couple others, the Coon tilted his nose to the sky, surveyed the area, then glowered back in the direction of the massive Hellhound.

Rushed and raspy in tone, he stated, "I have a question for you."

"Shoot."

"Actually, good idea. Get down."

I did as he asked, and he reached over me as if I were a personal barricade to fire at two approaching men. On contact with the bullets, the men went up in flames and shadows, allowing us to get on with our conversation. "Shit, these guys go down easy," the Coon commented.

"Yeah, but they're wearing us down, when you think about it," I complained. The more of those cloned Infras there were, the more resources they took from us. Bullets weren't cheap, and Stan could only get so many deals at Home Depot at a time for some of the stock.

"Psh, whatever, as long as we're winning."

I rolled my eyes underneath my hood. The Coon always had very straightforward priorities, but damn if he wasn't still as annoying as hell when it came to logistics.

"You ever see anythin' like this in Hell?" the Coon asked me when he caught his breath.

I'd almost forgotten that he said he had a question. "What?" I shot down another man, watching the shadow shoot out of him and sail off to join the murky blacks and greys of the shadows far off on the sides of the road.

"I keep meanin' to ask you Hell shit, but then I get all pissed," said the Coon, swiping down a woman who got a little too close to him for comfort, "at—you know."

His mom.

I hadn't really had the time to talk to him about the issue, either. But he hadn't gone home, and didn't seem like he wanted to. He was definitely not going to deviate from the League, I had to believe that much (based on that night alone, if nothing else), and I did have to remind myself that he was not _fully _related to the son of the Devil… not entirely, as far as I knew. Unless there'd been something lingering, but I didn't want to think about that.

"I keep trying to forget Hell," I admitted, keeping my eye out for others approaching. "Duck down, now," I noticed, when three men started our way with shotguns. They cocked. Aimed.

The Coon and I hit the ground, and the men fired, directly back at the Hellhound, who took the three massive blasts in her ribs. "Nice!" TupperWear called over, returning the favor by hurling one of his sharp discs over our heads… in order to take off the heads of those three gunmen.

"We're down to two!" Angel called, yanking back on the hound's ears.

The great beast bucked, and Mosquito shot just as Angel leapt down again, hitting the back of the hound's skull. She hit the ground hard with her front paws, thereby crushing one of the two Angel had just reported.

"Last one!" Angel shouted over at us. "Coon, looks like he's yours!"

I heard another five blasts from Mosquito's .45s, and a yelp when TupperWear crunched the she-wolf's skull with an overhead blow from his shield.

I turned just in time to watch the Coon tackle the final footsoldier of the bunch to the ground, and he knealt on top of him, choking him with his taloned left hand. The man pulled a gun, but the Coon headbutted him, disarmed the man, took the gun for himself, and shoved the barrel of it in the man's gaping mouth. I recoiled at the sight of that, yet could not look away.

"Where's Damien?" the Coon shouted. He yanked the gun out of the man's mouth, and smacked him across the face with it. "Where's Scott Tenorman?!" No answer. He smacked him again. _"WHERE'S DAMIEN?"_

"Waiting," the man finally answered, in a strained tone.

"WHERE?" hissed the Coon.

Nothing.

I saw his eyes flare and his skin tint red with anger, as the Coon then yanked off the man's goggles, flicked the toggle that we knew to be some kind of microphone, and shouted into it, "I'm not afraid of you, asshole! I'm shuttin' you down, you got me? You're not gonna cross Coon territory, motherfucker!"

He then tossed the goggles down, shot them, then shot the Ginger man between the eyes.

When he smoldered down into ash, I felt myself let out a pent-up breath; I'd almost forgotten that he wasn't alive.

"Coon," I said sternly. He shoved the gun back into his belt but did not answer me. The light drizzle had caused his fuzzy coon ears to droop somewhat, but he did not look completely beaten. He didn't look victorious, either, though. I walked around to give him a hand up, and slightly to my surprise, he took it. "Has… more shit happened?" I wondered. "Like, to you. Letters, or threats, or Damien, or—?"

"We'll talk," he said. "Can we?"

Fear clinched my chest for a moment, but I responded as calmly as I could, "Sure thing. Definitely."

"You don't remember much about Hell?" he checked.

"Here, can we save it?" I wondered. "We've gotta finish this thing off first."

"Yeah, good call."

We glanced in the direction of the three others, at the sound of another one of Mosquito's gunshots.

She looked like she was weakening.

"Guys, listen up," I ordered from where the Coon and I stood. "I think we can beat this thing. Give it all you've got on three, got it?"

"Got it," I heard Angel over the wire from the other side of the hound. I heard my other three teammates check in as well. I reached for my weapon that did the most damage, my .45, knowing that the others were doing the same all around our canine foe. The Coon pulled out his guns again, loaded new rounds, and held them at the ready.

"On my count. One…" I began. The hellhound turned and looked at me. She snarled, seemingly knowing what we were about to do. "Two…" I cocked my weapon. The hound pulled back her massive head and howled into the night, but before she could bring it down for another attack, I yelled, "THREE!"

All the League members opened fire at the same time. I emptied every bullet I had into that creature. So what if we were using more ammunition? This was a final volley, what I hoped would be the kill-shot to this battle with this relentless beast.

Turns out, it was.

I guess we had finally beat her down more than she could handle. Yeah, that's right, the Shadow League took on and out-fought a hound from Hell. We kicked so much ass. Gotta keep reminding myself of that every once in a while.

The she-beast let out another howl, this one of pain, before collapsing onto the pavement.

The drops from earlier had turned into true rain, and as the precipitation increased, we watched as the she-beast shrunk and cracked and reformed back into a woman. Damn, that noise was horrible. Her skin looked like it was sizzling. Once the reverse transformation was complete, she groaned low and long, trying to move but finding pain every which way she turned.

We all took a moment to breath, having no more immediate threats to worry about.

Mosquito walked over to where his discarded mask lay and picked it up from the ground. Then, he almost dropped it again. Without a face-covering, I could see his features completely, and they had gone nearly white. Like he'd seen a ghost or something. I looked at the object now held loosely in his hand, as if he was trying _not_ to touch it while still keeping hold of it or something. In spite of myself, I gasped. His mask was undamaged, but it was covered in the hound's blood.

Looking exactly as it had in that painting.

I needed some answers _right_ _now_.

I walked purposefully over to where the hound-turned-woman lay on the pavement. It was raining fully by then. I noticed that her skin had started to let off some vapor, almost as if the rain was burning her. _Shit_, I thought. She hadn't gone up in soot and flames once we had dealt her that last blow, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't be sticking around for very long, in any shape or form.

So, I didn't waste any time.

I reached down, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face so that it angled toward me, trying to ensure her undivided attention. "What's Damien after?" I demanded. "What does Hell want from us?"

She attempted to smirk, but then coughed up some blood before she responded. "You lead a team of men that possess within them properties not usually granted by God. You are of interest to the great build the Son we provide for must undergo."

I won't lie, I was starting to get a little spooked, by all the continued references to Heaven and especially Hell. But I was a lot angrier than I was scared right then, so I tried to press for more. "Damien and the New Between… I get that, I get that, but… _all_ of us?"

"The past lives on in blood and shadows."

"Start making sense!" I yelled.

I didn't get any more out of her, though. She smiled this eerie curling of her lips, and then her skin really did start to dissipate from the rain. I let go of her just as she started to literally evaporate from the water hitting her flesh. I've seen a lot of weird phenomena in my time, but watching that up close still managed to creep me out.

I shook it off and stood up. There was nothing left of the woman now, not even a scrap of clothing.

Fine, one less evil creature to worry about.

Returning to business, I sent Angel back to the shop with TupperWear and the Coon, to check in with the Goths and the others. Clyde and I had a little more to stay attentive to, after all. Neither of us could continue until we knew without doubt that Red and Bebe had made it back to the base in one piece. The fact that most of the others were active was promising, but still, there would be no harm in triple-checking on the girls.

So we thought.

– – –

_Kyle_

My captors made it quite clear from the beginning that when they said we were going to have a little chat, they meant it, and it would begin on foot, rather than wait till they'd taken me anywhere. It was almost a wonder that they could even handle both walking and speaking at once. These manufactured, false human likenesses were given orders through their goggles from a remote source, and meanwhile they walked and spoke like the hosts they had been copied from. I couldn't help but speculate exactly what, if any, 'thoughts' they even had, or if this dialogue was just a bunch of variations on information Every move they made was just a concoction of the combined wills of Damien Thorn and Scott Tenorman.

Hopefully those guys were at the top of the tier. If there was anything beyond Damien, I didn't want to think about it.

They'd certainly come up with an easy way to get the dirty work done, though. And if these guys were willing to share any of their ridiculous Ginger Separatist secrets with me that evening, I was ready to listen. Listen, but not surrender; hell, no.

I figured that the best way that I personally could oppose the GSM was not to fight them, but to play them. Sure, I was scared out of my Goddamn mind that they'd catch onto the fact that I was just going along with it, and had no intention whatsoever of joining their vague 'cause,' but while I could, I kept things simple. I nodded. I said an occasional, "Hmm, go on," or, "That's interesting."

Because, to my good fortune (in a very weird, roundabout way), these men were incredibly talkative. "The building is nearing completion," one man said, over the deep rumbling of thunder in the distance. "Do understand that you will be essential to the primary cause in more ways than one."

"Oh, yeah?"

I didn't strain myself to look at them, since there was nothing their expressions could give away that would make their words have any deeper meaning.

"You still have your recruitment papers, Mr. Broflovski?" the other asked me.

"Not on me. You know." I shrugged, and instantly wished I hadn't. The coil that they'd wrapped around my forearms was an awful vice. Movement just made the bonds feel tighter, to the point that I didn't even want to wiggle one index finger to attempt to untie the tight knot. Had to talk my way out of this, unless someone came along to untie me.

"Of course. We have more copies." No kidding, _really?_ Papers and people.

"Remind me again," I requested, "what exactly you're needing to talk to me about. I only skimmed the letter."

"We need to match your abilities with the role you'll play for us"

I bet.

God, I wanted to ask the, _And if I refuse?_ question that I was yearning to ask, but I had to give no indication of using any of this information against them. But at least they'd confirmed my already-standing supposition that they knew about my ability, and wanted to use it. Exploit it, even. I wasn't ruling anything out.

And no doubt they wanted Red in order to get at Kenny. Karen, too, I remembered, had received a letter. They were filtering through the people they considered most essential to this 'building' they were doing… and I wasn't going to leave the paintings out of their motives for a second. Something about the way those paintings seemed to speak to each of us could either be essential, for us in the League, or utterly destructive, depending on what we uncovered about them and when.

The men led me through town to a developing cul-de-sac, where we waited in the middle of the tar circle for a good four minutes before I heard signs of other movement. My chest tightened; my heart started pounding. Shit—

Either these guys were alive, or something was wrong, if I couldn't sense them.

The coils around my arms dug into… oh, fuck: very specific nerve endings. Within the logic of human biology, everything fits together. One little shut down can drastically alter perceptions in the brain. My own mind being as sensitive as it was, reactions came differently.

I stared straight forward at a rocky chunk of pavement and tried to tap into the pressures around it. And couldn't. Now, I knew that I had always had my quirk, that I always would, and that certain traumas could trigger it to react more wildly or shut down altogether.

But these guys were blocking it.

That was all the verification I needed that we were being tracked. Studied, even. Oh, and the GSM had _plenty_ to work off of, too: we'd been a League of heroes since most of us were only nine years old. Twelve years—and how long had they been studying us?

Were 'they' limited only to Tenorman's group? Exactly where did the divide happen between his interests and Damien's?

I had a feeling one had to be a part of this group in order to have any hope of finding out. Now that I had very, very few options to defend myself physically, I had little else to do but wait, to see who turned up out of hiding, and what kind of numbers we'd be dealing with. At least I had confidence that I wasn't alone. Stan had to have gone active as Toolshed by now; Bebe and Red were probably bunking out at the base, safe with Iron Maiden and my brother, which would free up Endgame and Marpesia… I had backup. I had backup. I had—

Why the fuck was I so nervous?

My insides flipped. I don't get nervous like this. I _don't._ Not usually.

There were about forty of them, gathering in a circle from behind the buildings. Some wore the traditional goggles, but I'd say a good fifteen of them were wearing gas masks instead. The scarce light in the cul-de-sac cast uneven shadows on all of them as they closed in on me and the two men that were still holding tightly to my arms. A good deal of the men and women were very visibly armed. Guns, mostly—shotguns, at that.

Those wearing gas masks, however, were armed with pickaxes.

Wonderful. And also what the _fuck._

_Note to Toolshed: get yourself a pickaxe. Might come in handy._

Suddenly, two bright lights snapped on behind a large group of Infras, and I would have been blinded had there not been so many bodies in the way. I squinted so that I could at least still see silhouettes of the group through the harsh light, but they died down to the normal glow of headlights—I guessed of a good-sized van or truck—when the crowd parted.

Colors flashed in front of my eyes as I blinked to readjust to dimmer light, and I racked my brain to try to remember if I'd even heard a vehicle approaching. Couldn't tell—my heart was drumming in my ears too hard. So I focused as best I could to listen now, and did indeed hear the opening and closing of a heavy door (definitely a truck); one, and then another. One set of footsteps clacked out onto the pavement, and took slow strides as another set scuffled down.

The second set was echoed by a third _click_ on the tarmac. And then they began to approach me.

I blinked and lifted my head, trying hard to focus as I adjusted. The realization that they'd blocked my sixth sense was bothering me to the point that I began doubting everything else I had as well.

First, the silhouette of the man came into view… I knew right away who he was. The dragging of his steps—one strong leg and one lame, echoed with the precise _click_ of a cane to correct the limp. My eyes adjusted when he was standing only about four feet from me.

Scott Tenorman.

He wasn't what I'd been expecting. Pushing thirty, Tenorman had the eyes of a man twice his age—sallow, traumatized. He'd never, ever healed.

And that made him dangerous.

I doubted he was much of a fighter himself, though, hence the mass production of henchmen to do all his work. He could have been tall, but the limp hunched him down to roughly my own height if not slightly less; his shoulders were unevenly placed, the left ever so slightly higher than the right, but he wore clothing that would have fooled the casual onlooker: a double-breasted black evening suit, complete with the douchiest motherfucking red ascot I've ever seen (creepy as the guy was and heavy as the atmosphere was in that moment, _that fucking ascot I swear…),_ and a wilted lily pinned to his lapel.

Tattooed on the right side of his neck was the GSM symbol. It looked recently done.

The R'lyeh scar on the back of my own neck seemed to throb out a warning. I'm kinda sensitive about that area.

To make things worse, Tenorman's entire frame, fooled to the eye with the suit or not, was almost skeletal. Thin arms, thin neck, thin face—it made his eyes seem huge and haunted, and his numerous freckles seemed to be the only hint of health in his entire figure. Several tangles of his red hair had already been shocked grey.

"Hello, cousin," he greeted me, his lips peeling back into a grin over strangely even teeth.

I could think of nothing to say in response to him, so I held my tongue.

"I said, hello, Broflovski," Tenorman scowled, leaning up into my face and jabbing my chin with the top of his cane. It was studded with something, but I had not caught a look. Whatever it was, it smelled awful. It wasn't him—it was the cane… something on there wasn't right. "Bunked with your parents a few years ago," he continued sourly, trying to bait me.

I moved only slightly, but only in a stupid attempt to shake off my bonds and get a feel for the objects around me. At least I could tell by sight that some of these Infras were clones—just had to be sure before the League made a move.

"Must be great to have them back."

My heart fluttered, as if a deep-seated part of my subconscious had seen this coming.

Almost immediately, I found myself thinking about Sally Turner. As far as I knew, Tenorman barely even knew the girl… but she was a Ginger, he needed her, and he went after _her parents._ His excuse for sending letters to Kenny and Karen? Their mother. Excuse for going after the Harrisons? In part, their mother. Another attack had just led us toward Craig Tucker's dad.

And Tenorman dug up the dirtiest secret buried in South Park to date: Liane Cartman's tryst with the devil.

Twelve years after Cartman's disgusting yet ultimately childish act against Mr. and Mrs. Tenorman, with all of us now into our twenties, Scott was making his move. And it involved a deal with Hell. A plot against the space between reality and subconscious thought.

"Happy ever after and all that, am I right?" Tenorman went on, smacking the side of my face a couple times as he pulled back the cane. What the fuck was that smell?

"So what do you want?" I demanded.

"Right to the point! That's what I like about you, Broflovski," Tenorman said, showing a cocked half-grin which was undeniably forced. "There's a lot to like about you, really. And there's a lot you could do for me."

"Gimme a reason why first," I said, watching his every limp move as he began to pace between two pickaxe-wielding men. "Even madmen have reasons for what they do."

Tenorman laughed gutterally as he picked up his pacing. His cane clacked furiously against the tar, loud enough to drown out his lagging footsteps. "Mad!" he chortled. "That's what I've been hearing every day since I was sixteen. Took about a year for it to sink in, and then, snap!" He stopped abruptly and cocked his head to one side. "Act out a little, and they called me mad and off to those crazy houses I went! Let me ask you something, Broflovski: have you ever experienced Hell?"

"Well," I said, rolling my eyes as I racked my brain through the years-long catalogue of cataclysmic events I'd seen in my life, "there was that one time in like third grade or something I saw my first zombie… uhh… I've been asked to kill people before, there's been a bunch of shit sinc—"

"I'm talking—about—_HELL!"_ Tenorman erupted, stepping up and whacking me in the chest with that foul-smelling cane. I choked and had to give myself a few seconds to breathe before I could watch his expressions change, his distressed eyes appearing to burn in their sunken sockets. "Hell's such a simple fucking concept to people who don't know what it is."

"So tell me what real Hell is, then," I coughed out.

"If I tell you," said Tenorman, pulling a rolled sheet of paper from the inner pocket of his evening suit, "you join me. You work for me. You're a part of it."

"The Carnival?" I guessed, trying not to show any of my nerves. At the same time, I prayed that my wire was still on. Trying not to hold my breath, I dared to continue, "What is your Carnival all about, anyway?"

"Both of these are secrets I cannot simply _share_ with you," Tenorman told me. "I need your compliance."

Okay, so: choices. Obviously, I wanted to and kind of needed to hear him out. This was the closest any of us had gotten to real answers thus far, other than Kenny getting up close and personal with Damien… hopefully between our two encounters, we could piece this whole fiasco together. But that meant that, obviously, I needed to get out of this. Maybe I could buy myself time.

_God,_ I thought, _please tell me my wire's still on…_

And that someone was nearby…

"All right," I said, allowing myself to sound reluctant. I couldn't have pulled off anything else. Plus, Tenorman had to have been expecting that I wasn't about to join without a question. "That's a contract?" I guessed.

Tenorman unrolled the sheet of paper. At the top was the GSM symbol, and the words, _Infernal Majestic Management Presents the Separatists' Carnival. Recruitment Contract: Binding._ So there was my answer.

"You know what a Carnival is, of course, don't you?" Tenorman said, attempting to taunt me. "It's just a celebration. A great, big party that everyone's invited to." His eyes almost sparked as he added in a darker tone, "Everyone."

I tried to scan the page as he continued, "We have our builders, we have our guards, we have nearly everyone and everything we need to get started. We just need some attractions to bring the public in."

"I'm not an attraction," I insisted.

"Oh, but you _are,"_ Tenorman laughed. "Gonna sign, Broflovski, or are we going to end the conversation here?"

Buy time, buy time, buy time… "I can't sign if you've got my hands bound," I pointed out.

"We can't very well be cutting you free just yet," said one of the men still holding onto my arms. "Not while you're still part of this world."

_This_ world?

Had they already broken through to the Spaces Between…?

"Then you'll have to tell me before I sign," I pointed out. "That Hell secret, there. Once you've finished saying everything you need to say, I'll sign it."

"A valid point," Tenorman nodded. "Very well. It's a gamble, but I'll take it. Though games of chance aren't really your thing, are they?" he said, as he rolled the paper up again and paced away from me. This man sure loved stalling for dramatic effect. "Better suited to a couple of your friends."

"What're you talking about?" I had to ask.

"Nothing you need to know just yet," was the answer. "Where were we…? Ah, yes. Hell. Hell, Broflovski, is a place, and it's enormous. As you can imagine, it's also crowded. You want to know why?"

"Because a lot of people die, and we're having overpopulation issues?" I shrugged.

"Funny."

"I didn't mean that to be fu—"

"But no." Fine, keep talking. "Hell is crowded because Satan let things fall into disarray. The circles of Hell became full over the years, and the place became a free-for-all. It's become almost desirable to end up there. He's been getting his act back together as of late, and a certain Damien Thorn is re-constructing the circles as they once were. But even then, there's overflow.

"Thanks to that Cthulhu event a few years back, Hell finally has its hand on some prime real estate, to expand."

"Into the space where R'lyeh was?" I wondered.

"Precisely. But I'm not interested in that, much. I'm helping out, but only because the _place_ is nothing compared to what Hell really is."

_Here we go,_ I thought; _finally…_

Tenorman walked back over to me, in order to lean in and whisper harshly into my ear, "Hell is in your own mind."

He then stood back, pinning upon himself the most gruesome and sly sneer a person could muster. That was hardly news. I'd heard such speculation before, but he seemed genuinely invested in the idea that this was a new discovery… and that bothered me.

"Real Hell," he continued, "exists in every place and time. I've been there. Some people, most people, don't realize that in their lifetimes, and spend their afterlives in a manifestation of the Hell of the collective unconscious.

"With this expansion, we're gonna have a breach," he said proudly. "Personal and collective, and so close to real life, no one on Earth will experience Heaven ever again. Don't you get it?" He tapped me with the rolled-up paper, and I felt myself shiver at the contact. "We can transcend reality. We can build the new Between."

Thunder crashed overhead. Tenorman and I were the only ones who looked up. That was more than enough of an indication that everyone in his GSM crew that evening was a clone. As much as I wanted to ask where the real people were, I didn't quite have the time.

Since that's when the laser hit.

The truck that Tenorman had come in on took the blast and the bed of it began to give off smoke. There was no explosion, only a bright red smoldering, but enough to put the vehicle out of commission. The headlights went out, and as lightning flashed twice across the sky, I was able to see what the cargo of that pickup had been: a looming mound of some kind of dust, which began to burn red and emit into the now-hazy air a bright blue flame that appeared to be laced with a red halo. And damn, did it reek.

The same awful scent of that cane topper… I knew what it was, I just couldn't place—wait.

The scent of sulfur. That topper was crude pyrite.

Yeah, that was a sulfur compound, all right; pungent, it tore through the air and burned my nostrils. The smoke rose from the rapidly-burning flames and began to fill the cul-de-sac.

"Spread out!" Tenorman ordered his team. One of the men behind him handed him a gas mask, which he pulled on and shouted out into what had to have been a built-in microphone, "We can't compromise the last of the recruitment! The building goes on as planned." He then pointed to me with the tip of his fools' gold cane, "You're coming with me."

"Sorry to interrupt," I heard an altered yet still nasal voice call through the billowing smoke, giving Tenorman pause.

I glanced over, pretending to be just as surprised as the others around me, despite the fact that I knew damn well that this meant I wouldn't have to put up with this crazy extremist much longer. The man on my right arm evaporated into smoke and ash, giving me the chance to shake the second. My arms were still bound too tightly in that piercing coil, however, so the best I could do was run.

Luckily, there, indeed, was Endgame, walking toward the cul-de-sac, with Toolshed, looking pretty fucking pissed, on his right. Endgame had a sword in both hands, though his right index finger and thumb were poised at the edge of his dark sunglasses, just in case he needed to fire off another laser. Toolshed twisted his awl around in his right hand, but kept his left free for whatever he'd end up needing.

"Endgame," he said, and it echoed into my wire (thank God it had still been on), "on your go."

"Shit," Tenorman muttered. "That fucking League."

Indeed.

Toolshed made eye contact with me, which was all he had to do. I needed to stand still for just a few moments more. The iron sulfide in the truck burned brighter as the haze began to turn to light rain—I felt droplets against my skin, felt my hair begin to stick to my forehead, my clothes to dampen, and I watched as the smoldering mineral mound glowed blue and red like a beacon and then begin to singe out. But in the light rain, the smoke persisted, offering a thick, cloudy cover both threatening and useful.

The Infras scattered on Tenorman's cue, and two of them were instantly down with slices from Endgame's swords and Toolshed's awl. Once I was free, it'd be just the three of us against this manufactured army, but I had to hold to the hope that we'd manage, and that we wouldn't be on our own for long.

"NOW!"

I spun backwards; through the haze, Toolshed rushed forward and cut a clean line through the coils around my arms with his awl, and a split second later, I felt that I'd been freed. With a huge breath of relief, I yanked my arms out to either side, fraying the rest of the now-ruined binding. Once I clenched and unclenched my fists a few times to get the blood flowing properly through my hands again, I reached back into Toolshed's belt, grabbed the automatic drill gun on his right hip, and got down, crouched on one knee, bent at a perfect angle to aim forward through the smoke and fired two drill bits at one of our attackers.

The scream and red flare that followed told me I'd gotten him. Satisfied, I gathered my footing, pressed my back to Toolshed's—rather awkward, with that sledgehammer strapped directly between us, but I managed—and sent out another volley of shots, hitting three targets. Toolshed, too, grabbed out his other drill gun and opened fire; together, we disintegrated at least a dozen of our opponents before the smoke even cleared.

"How you holding up?" he asked me.

"Kinda wish I wasn't so damned exposed," I grumbled, meaning, of course, that it kind of sucked that I had no time to change into my uniform and finish this fight as the Human Kite. "But I'm fine."

"Nice. Duck."

I did as he asked; we fell down into a ready kneel at the same time, keeping our aim out as a laser blast fired over us and destroyed two men in our path. "Yo, anyone around who can clear up this smoke?" Toolshed barked into his wire.

No sooner had he asked that than someone leapt over the two of us, making a great two-point landing a couple feet away. The female, armored figure pulled two metal fans off of her similarly plated skirt—Marpesia to the fucking rescue. She kept those fans concealed on either side of her skirt, to the point that even those of us in the League forgot at times that she had recently mastered those weapons at all… she'd added them into her arsenal only a couple of years prior.

"Anyone not wearing goggles might wanna close their eyes!" she shouted as she climbed up to the top of the truck.

Meaning me.

I didn't hesitate to follow her instruction. I tucked my chin down and squeezed my eyes shut, keeping my hands steady on the drill gun. Without sight, I opened up the rest of my senses instead. Including, of course, the very one that would most likely end up serving me—and all of us—best in this fight.

Everything has matter.

And everything with matter has a code.

They'd cut off my heightened sense with that coil, but the freedom from it had given me liberty of exploration yet again.

Drawing in a deep breath, I opened myself to the air. The number of non-living yet moving Infras in the area was steadily decreasing, but we still had plenty to deal with. One happened to be approaching me, fast.

An object in motion stays in motion until it is forced to stop. Testing out the best of my ability, I thrust out my left hand, still armed with the drill gun in my right, and forced the moving object approaching me to cease velocity. I felt a twinge just above my temples, and held the figure there in mid-stride as I aimed at it with the drill gun. As soon as I released the Infra-Red soldier from my mental grip, I fired, and when I opened my eyes, his body disintigrated, leaving just the animate shadow.

The shadow, I noticed, tried snaking its way toward the large smoldering pile of pyrite on the truck bed, and climbed up along the vehicle's side.

"Marpesia, move!" I called up.

She glanced at me, then down at the moving shadow. Rather than move right away, however, she clipped her fans back onto her skirt and un-strapped her extendable quarter staff from her back and attempted to stab the black writhing mass as it drew closer to her.

…Much to my surprise, it worked. Oh, Kenny would be interested in hearing that, for sure.

"Let's keep it moving!" Endgame hollered out to the field.

"Anyone got a lock on Tenorman?" Toolshed asked.

Fuck.

Where had that disturbed ringleader run off to? I hadn't heard the helicopter come to claim him, and his truck was kind of in the slow process of melting into nothingness.

Marpesia glanced at the now-solidifying pyrite behind her and leapt off of the truck and into a puddle, which splashed up at a woman in GSM uniform just before Marpesia smacked her across the face with her quarter staff, kicked her to the ground, and drove the weapon into the woman's back.

Thunder growled in the sky, and lightning crashed at the same time Endgame cleared more of the field with another well-aimed laser. "Heads up!" he shouted toward me.

I spun to see a man and woman rushing toward me. I fired only to find that I'd already gone through a round of drill bits, so the best solution was to drop the tool and stop both Infras the only other way I could. Thrusting both hands out, and feeling an awful disturbance on my forearms as I did, I managed to halt their movement. Then, drawing in a deep breath, feeling the headache start to take an early toll, I turned and hurled first the woman, then the man, back toward the truck, where they landed into the pyrite mound, and melted into the crude mineral.

Oh, shit.

I'd just solved something else: these guys were a far cry from a wax museum. They were made of iron sulfide.

"Holy shit," Toolshed remarked. "Nice."

"Well, I try," I panted. He tossed me a new round of drill bits as he spun out his claw hammer to catch a man by the ear with the two sharp prongs and flip him down to the ground. The man hit the ground and pulled a gun on Toolshed, who held up his own drill gun and fired first. He stepped back away from the disintegrating body as I mentally yanked the drill gun I'd dropped a few seconds before back into my hand. I was then re-loaded and ready for the next wave.

"How the fuck do you do that?" Toolshed laughed. Hypothetical question.

"Not the best idea for me to get into any more logistics," I warned him, firing at one of the Infras that was heading toward me. "All I know is, at least we can bring 'em down."

"Got that right," said Toolshed. "I think it's time to wrap this shit up."

When I glanced back at him, he holstered his drill gun, stood, and un-clipped his sledgehammer from his back. He wasn't kidding.

The men with pickaxes encroached on us, but before the first of them could even lift his own weapon, Toolshed raised the sledgehammer over his head and swung it like a bat into the man's head. Explosion upon contact. He was then quick to swing his favored tool into another man's gut, sending him backwards into yet another, where the tip of the pickaxe the second held ended up jammed into the first man's back, and the two went up in flames.

Another man swung out at him, but Toolshed caught him by the forearm, disarmed him, and locked the man's arm behind his back, causing him to drop his weapon. A woman took a shot, but Toolshed held up the man he'd grabbed as a shield, then shoved the body off before it could explode. He managed to slip the man's armband off before the combustion, though—the slightly-armored gauntlet that bore the GSM symbol. Toolshed tucked it into his belt, then swung out with his sledgehammer to destroy the woman who had fired.

When Toolshed feinted back toward me, I grabbed his flathead screwdriver out of his belt and stood in time to cut across the face of a man raising his fist to strike me. A woman behind me got a two-fisted blow in on my back, which got me to my knees, but I rolled onto my side on the ground, my forearms aching as I did; I still managed to lift up the drill gun and fire.

I choked just watching the drill bits hit her in the throat before she combusted.

In all the mayhem, I just knew that Tenorman had made his getaway. He'd used the cover of smoke and the distraction his expendable crew provided.

As I continued fighting for my own life, I began to wonder what Tenorman's stance on the subject of life at all was. Clearly, he was not wasting real human lives with the things he'd created to be footsoldiers and missionaries of his still rather ambiguous Carnival, and yet he seemed not to care about putting others' lives in danger. He was particularly targeting parents of those who could be useful to him, which, twisted as the logic was, made some sense to me, given the man's background.

Closer now, thunder clapped and growled overhead, and the clouds opened up. As the downpour began, the remainder of our opponents retreated, scattering quickly so as to avoid the heavier rain. The harsh droplets put out the rest of the smoldering iron sulfide pile, and we were left around nothing but piles of dust, ash, and minerals. Just as the four of us were checking in with each other, TupperWear's van screeched into view. The back door opened for us (I was glad to see the Guardian Angel manning the door), and I heard some kind of conversation already taking place between TupperWear and the Coon, who was occupying the front seat.

Quick as he'd come, TupperWear sped away, taking the route back toward the Goths' place, rather than his own.

"What's up?" Toolshed wondered. "We're not heading to the base?"

"No, Henrietta's onto something," said TupperWear. "How'd you guys do?"

"I—holy shit," I breathed out. "Guys, he held a contract in my face."

The Coon whirled around in his seat and I swear he was baring his teeth at me. "Who?" he demanded.

"Who else?" I snapped back. "Scott Tenorman."

_"WHAT?"_

"So we've definitely located him," Marpesia said before an argument could erupt.

"Where the fuck is he?" the Coon wanted to know.

"If I had any idea, we'd be going there now," I told him, for the group's benefit. "How about you guys? What happened?"

"Let's just say we got a pretty good taste of Hell," Angel commented.

Didn't we all.

– – –

When we returned to the Tenth Circle, Henrietta was at the door, which had fallen almost completely off of its hinges, and gave no greeting other than, "Glad you guys are back. You can clean this crap up."

"Nice to see you, too," said Endgame.

"Do you guys have a first aid kit?" Toolshed interrupted, before Henrietta could deal another snarky remark.

"Why?"

"I might've gotten burned," I said.

"Might have? Does it feel like you did?"

"Yeah."

"Then you got fucking burned. Come on." Henrietta waved me in, then turned to the others to say, "You guys keep watch. And you," she added to Toolshed, "fix the door."

"What the fuck?!" Toolshed snapped. "Why me?"

"Cuz you have _fucking powertools,"_ the Goth snarled back. Toolshed backed off, unable to argue. "Look, he'll be fine, I'll see what I can do. Now be a good little do-gooder and _fix our hinges."_

I gave him a quick glance to assure him that Henrietta was right, I'd be fine (though the burning on my skin was _really trying to convince me otherwise,_ I mean _ugh),_ and followed the Goth woman through the wrecked coffee shop toward the stairs. Glancing around, I shuddered to imagine what Kenny and Clyde must have been up against after Stan and I had left. Chairs and tables were overturned, scratch marks and bullet streaks lined the walls, but the paintings had not been touched.

The ten of them hung, pristine on their mounts, laughing down at the ruin their gallery had been subjected to. I glanced at Toolshed over my shoulder, to catch the same glance he'd cast at me, just before he turned to his work and began drilling the door back onto its hinges.

Henrietta led me upstairs into the bleak apartment she shared with the other two Goths, and while I knew it was pointless to ask if we could throw on an overhead light, I was at least glad to see that they had a few lamps here and there, rather than just candles. "Take your shirt off and sit down over there," she instructed firmly, more or less pointing toward the uninviting sofa that faced an open area near what I knew to be Mysterion's preferred window.

It hurt enough just trying to peel off my layers, so I was glad I hadn't been rigged with tightly-strapped guns as Stan, Clyde and Kenny had. If the Infras _had_ to have bound my arms, I suppose I had to count myself lucky that they tightened the rope over my clothes, and that I'd been wearing long sleeves—otherwise, I may not have had any use for my forearms at all.

I made it to the sofa just as I managed to yank off my collared white shirt, which was a damn good thing, since the shock of seeing my skin at that point forced me to trip backwards and sit down. I yelped from the sudden caught fall and set my shirt down to the side. There was no blood or anything to really make a mess, but the marks on my arms were not those of a simple rope burn. I could probably pass it off for that if anyone were to ask (work was not going to be as much of a problem as explaining this to my mother), but even then it was kind of obvious.

The material the GSM had been using was more like a hot coil, and there were now swirling, unbroken lines criss-crossing around from my wrists up to my elbows. My instant fear was that they might scar. Or get infected. Or both. Just as I was about to start hyperventilating from panic, Henrietta snapped her two companions into the front room and walked in from the kitchen herself with a large silver basin full of water and ice.

Her companion with the two-toned hair was the first to answer her call, and without a word, he followed her into the front area with a circular folding table that situated itself low to the ground. It was an antique top, it seemed, Victorian or something (I'm snowballing here: just about everything those guys _had_ was Victorian), but with modern hinges to make the legs fold up for storage.

He set it down directly in front of where I was sitting, and Henrietta hefted the ice basin onto it just after the other Goth had managed to slip a black cloth over the wood surface to prevent leak damage. "Go get that herb crap," Henrietta said, nudging her friend to move again.

"Look," he argued, "I'm not gonna be these heroes' errand boy just because you've still got some girl-boner for Mysterion."

"I don't, and yes you will," Henrietta fought him back.

"Why?"

"Because the fucking devil is conning us and that should piss you off as much as it does me."

Her friend had no argument but to dig into the pocket of his tight black pants for a slim silver tin full of cigarettes. He slid one into his mouth while studying the vortex of burn marks on my arms, then lit up with the shining flick of a Zippo before walking away, muttering, "At least we can fuckin' close the Goddamn shop for a while, but I'm not picking up any fucking hammers…"

"Um, for all it's worth, thank you," I said to Henrietta, who was sending a death glare off in the direction of her grumbling friend. "We honestly wouldn't be able to get so much done if you weren't helping us out."

The Goth took my compliment with an almost vaguely grateful look, did not thank me (I wasn't expecting her to), and walked over to the bookshelf situated on the wall to my left, where I shuddered at a Cthulhu relic that was being used as a bookend.

"So… conning you," I said, trying to transition back into a conversation that she might actually want to have, while also attempting to avoid thinking about the kind of pain I was physically in. "You mean the paintings?"

"That fucking Thorn guy," Henrietta grumbled, folding her arms. She drummed her painted fingernails on the skin of her upper arms with a ferocity that made me fear she might pierce herself if she kept it going. "I _knew_ something had to be up, and I thought tonight's thing might be a good trap to end it and still get my Goddamn money for the use of space."

"I thought you guys didn't care too much about income," I noted.

"I need it for a trip to Massachusetts," Henrietta told me.

"Research trip?" I guessed.

"Research trip," she sighed.

"I mean… _is_ there even more to be discovered about that?" I wondered. "Is this about that Dreamland stuff?"

"Yup." She selected a book off of the shelf, and had just found the page she needed when both of her companions returned, the shorter of the two with a slim silver box that he handed over my head to Henrietta. I'd have to pick her head about the Dreamlands later.

"Ugh, what happened to you?" the tallest of the three gawked at my new cuts.

"Hi, thanks for agreeing to let us reconvene here," I answered with a forced fake grin, "that was very kind of you."

"Whatever. Seriously, what'd you do?"

"Got a little too close to the enemy," I said.

"So here." Henrietta had opened the silver box, revealing a lined case stocked with ointments, oils, and a couple bottles of nothing but crushed herbs. I took the thing instantly to be these guys' version of a first aid kit (and found myself wondering where Token or Butters, the real team medics, were…), and watched and wafted while Henrietta poured a couple of select items into the icy basin to give it a stir. I didn't recognize the scent of anything, but at least it was better than burning iron sulfide. "Put your arms in."

"That'll help?" I wondered, leaning in closer out of curiosity for what she'd done.

"No, it's gonna singe your arms off. Just do it."

"Isn't Token back?"

"Your fuckin' doctor's just gonna give you more of the same," Henrietta said, starting to look pissed at me for not instantly taking to her home remedy.

"We just don't do mainstream medicine here," the taller of her companions added as he lit up a clove.

I was about to make a comment on how, with their smoking habits, they really should put some faith in Western medicine, but now was not the time or place for that conversation, I was lacking in options, and my arms really fucking hurt. Shrugging off my lingering doubt, I plunged my forearms into the water. The relief was instantaneous, even though the water was biting.

"Thanks," I sighed out, glad to have that burning sensation dying down.

Once again, I was given a cold shoulder on that, but I knew I had to take it. Plus, drowned in temporary relief, I didn't care. I'd need someone to talk to soon, though, since a part of my brain was still shaking from having been nearly forced into signing a contract with the GSM.

One of the Goths mumbled something about Wilcox being in the other room, at the same time a knock came from the door. The men instantly disappeared down the hallway, the store manager calling back in his raspy tone, "They can sit here and talk but they're not fucking staying."

"Don't think they really want to," Henrietta muttered back as she strode over to the door, the length of her dress hiding her feet even with her extended steps.

There were only two at the door: Ike and Karen, both still dressed in most of their gear, but without masks, which was the signal for us to be able to speak on a name-basis, rather than stick with aliases. Ike, naturally, had his Canadian flag iPad with him. He looked over at me, and was walking over just after nodding his compliance to Henrietta's demand that he and Karen be the ones letting people in for a while.

When Henrietta, too, had ambled on down the hall to where apparently Wilcox was hiding out (and, damn, did we have questions for him), my brother had walked over to where I was sitting over the basin, and greeted me with, "Kyle, buddy, you okay?"

"I, uh—shaken, a little," I admitted, glad that he was there. "On the mend. What're you doing here? Did Bebe and Red make it back to you guys?"

"Yeah, and Iron Maiden and I set up a lock-down before I left, so they should be fine for the night."

"Mysterion and Mosquito still active?" I guessed.

"Yup, so Karen's gonna get stuff rolling here once Butters is back," Ike said, setting his iPad down carefully on the floor by the closest bookshelf. "We've gotta call off the mission for the night, though, gotta re-group. I brought street clothes, so the other guys're getting changed downstairs. Wendy and Cartman are on floor clean-up, Token and Stan've got the door back on, and Craig's taking archive photos of the paintings. We're gonna talk to Wilcox, and I'm gonna scan the pics to see if I get anything. Karen and I're on reserve if Mysterion needs anyone." Good call. He paused, then removed his wide-brimmed hat and knealt over the low table, setting his hands on either side of the basin. A whiff of the ointments, and he recoiled somewhat, but the concern in his expression won out over any discomfort. "Honestly, though, are you okay?"

Now that he'd given me the time to think about it, I was a little more open to the sting I was feeling, both from the wounds and from the harsh ice. "I hope so," was what I ended up saying. Despite that, I managed a grin, when I thought about all my brother was doing for the League. He'd been active and hard-working from his first day, and had come a long way even since then. "Jeez, Ike," I commented, "when the hell'd you grow up and start taking charge in the League?"

"'Bout the time you went to college, dude," he grinned back.

Which did get me thinking again that Karen would be out of town starting this fall, and Ike the following year. …And what then…?

Again, though: a thought for another time.

I was about to say more, but Karen opened the door for the next wave: Token, Craig, and, much to my added relief, Stan. Ike patted my shoulder and stood as he reclaimed his iPad, then walked over to corner Craig. They set up a little tech corner near Karen, who hung off of Ike's shoulder and watched with a sigh as he went about his work.

Stan was through the door and rushing over as soon as he could push past the others. He'd changed out his uniform for a loose-fitting black shirt and an old pair of blue jeans, and had hastily washed his face, arms and hair. He shrugged down a duffel bag, which I knew to be full of his Toolshed gear, gawked for a second at the basin setup, then managed to exclaim, "Kyle! Everything okay? How are—"

"Hi, Stan," I got out.

He gulped in a breath, and sat down next to me. He called for Token over our shoulders, then set his arms around my waist and began hastily, "I'm sorry they—"

"I'm okay," I assured him.

"I wanted to come up sooner," Stan muttered.

"I know." I kissed Stan's cheek for his sweet thoughts, and he smiled a little before getting distracted by the basin again. "I'm fine, though, Henrietta had some kind of herb remedy that's working."

"You sure?" Stan double-checked.

"Hey, guys. What've we got?" The two of us looked up as Token approached. He set down his own duffel bag and rummaged through it, extracting a medical kit much more modern and, to my eyes, impressive than the Goths', no real offense to them. "Same thing on both arms?"

"Yeah."

I removed just my left arm, being closest to him, from the water; Stan's reaction was much more tense and animated than Token's. My boyfriend managed to settle down slightly when Token almost immediately announced, "Okay, good, it's first-degree."

"If that's a first-degree burn, then I already have cancer from the second-hand smoke up here," Stan insisted, all the same. He was right to doubt: the burn marks were blistered, which was the thing that led me to believe that they were scars rather than just points of irritation.

"You can trust me," Token said calmly. He opened his first aid kit and took out a dry towel, which he pressed lightly against my wet forearm. The contact surged and I felt slightly nauseous, but it wasn't anything too foreign. "That feel kinda the same as contact with a stove burn or sunburn?"

"Yeah," I coughed.

"Kinda the same thing, then," said our reliable medic. "It's a surface burn. Luckily, they didn't break skin."

"But are we _worried?"_ Stan asked firmly. "I mean, that was a rope or something they used, but that is a real fucking burn, first-degree or not, dude, it's a _burn."_

"And I've got stuff to treat it," Token assured us both. "Keep relaxing and take some time to feel better for now, but get me when you're ready for some gauze and bandages. Don't expose the burns, and they'll start to reduce in about a week."

"Great," I sighed. "Thanks."

Token nodded, said, "No problem," where the Goths had neglected to, then added, "I mean it, just take it easy for a bit, I'd just say no longer than like eight, ten minutes."

"Thanks again," I repeated.

"Hey, Stan," Token said as an afterthought. "Here." He passed Stan the white cloth he'd taken from the first aid kit, which he kept in hand, and instructed, "Alternate pressure on Kyle's arms after a couple minutes. If the Goths have another cloth, borrow it."

Stan nodded, and Token took his leave to check in with the others. I glanced behind me to see Henrietta show up in her hallway to talk to him, and he followed her to another room. Point Western medicine: I guess Wilcox had requested that, too. Which did get me kind of worrying what had happened to the artist… probably pretty bad shock, at the very least.

Stan chewed his lower lip for a second, then rubbed my back with his left hand, while he dipped the cloth in the cold basin water with his right. I stretched my arms out over the basin, gripping the rim, and felt my entire body tense when Stan pressed the wet cloth to the burns on my right arm. "Sorry," he apologized right off, his tone quiet, "does that really hurt?"

"Yeah, but I need the cold compress, it's okay," I said. I tilted my head down and coughed a couple times, my evening catching up to me, and added, "At least this way we really do know it's not third-degree, you know?"

"I guess."

"Stan?"

His fingers curled in a little, where they were placed on my back—he unfurled them again slowly and continued stroking a circle between my shoulderblades, while he alternated pressure on different points of my right arm. "I'm sorry, Kyle," he whispered. "I shouldn't've let those guys take you in the first place."

There was no hiding the grief in his expression. Yes, we'd been on a mission, and yes, we'd been poorly armed for that level of a confrontation, but we'd made it out, hadn't we? "Stan, it's okay," I repeated.

"No, it's not," he lamented. "Kyle, it's really not."

"What're you talking about?" I wondered. That was when I realized that his hands were shaking. He dipped the cloth in the cold water again, wrung it out in his fist, and pressed it even more gently against my skin. "Stan, we're all on the same page about this," I reminded him. "League business first. We did what we had to, and it's not like I'm actually still with those crazy fucks at their Carnival base right now. I got a bunch of information out of them, and we're closer, and—"

"No," Stan interrupted, sounding angry with himself. "That might be a rule, but—or maybe it's just me or—sorry, babe, I can't do this."

Oh, shit. When we weren't joking around, nicknames only really came when Stan was really feeling down about something, or at least when he was very emotionally jarred. "You don't have to worry," I tried. I couldn't get eye contact out of him. "Stan?"

"I can't do this." He shook his head. "I can't—I can't _do this."_

He dropped his hand and rose abruptly, tripping just a little over his own feet. I heard his breath catch, heard him mutter a couple things pertaining to his failed footing, and turned my head to watch as he started, slightly slouched, to walk away.

"Stan?" I called after him.

"I'm getting you some ice," he said quickly, his words clipped.

I thought about calling out again, but understood that he needed a second of space to himself. Letting out a long breath, I bent my arms at the elbows to keep blood flowing, then took up the cloth in my right hand, dipped it in the basin, and applied pressure to my left arm's wounds.

I was worried about him, though—while I knew that the subject of me getting hurt, be it emotionally or physically, was something that got Stan pretty worked up, he'd generally always been good about not only knowing that I could fight my own battles, but encouraging me to. Maybe it was just the suddenness of this whole GSM fiasco, or the fact that I was one of their more focused targets. Either way, I didn't want him feeling like had no control or say with this current setback. I certainly hoped he wasn't actually blaming himself; it did hurt at times when he went that route.

We'd had a couple of scuffles along the way, but continued balancing each other out. And we were both still active in the League, and took our work seriously, but with the future of it hanging in question… shit, he wasn't having second thoughts in the midst of this fight, was he? I mean, neither of us knew how involved we'd _always_ end up being, but the League kind of demanded our attention right now.

Whatever was getting to him, I'd be sure to find the time to talk to him about it.

Stan returned a couple minutes later with two coffee canisters full of ice and a black dish cloth. He walked up to me with a genuine, but still heavily concerned, smile.

"Sorry," he sighed again, as he slowly knealt to pour the bowl of ice into the basin. Stan dipped the fingers of his right hand into the water to test the new temperature, swished them around in the ice a couple of times, then soaked the new black cloth he'd brought with him. After wringing it out, he lifted his eyes to meet mine, switched the cloth into just his right hand, turned his left hand palm up, and requested, "Here, let me see."

I stopped applying pressure to the scabbing cuts on my lower left arm, and held both arms out over the basin again. I don't know if it was the awful light in the Goths' apartment or what, but the exposed cuts really did look pretty fucking awful, and clearly not dealt by anything on Earth.

Stan didn't wince this time. He looked over the cuts, gathered his breath, and lay the new, cold towel over the marks on my right arm. I shivered at the initial touch, and felt myself grit my teeth with the sting from the continued cold contact. The relief was pretty instantaneous after that, though, which was wonderful.

"Better?" Stan checked with me, his voice cracking somewhat with nerves.

I nodded. "Much better," I told him. "Thanks for the ice."

"Mmhmm…"

"What's up?" I asked, since I had the time, and the others were still active in their respective chores.

"Huh?"

"You just seem kinda…"

"Well, I am," Stan admitted. No matter what word I could have ended that statement with, he seemed to agree. "Sorry. I kinda feel like an asshole."

I felt my eyebrows knit together in confusion. "Why?"

"I dunno. I mean, you're right. We should put the League first. I just… kinda can't. Kyle, I can't.

"It just… it gets harder," Stan said, wringing the cloth out between my arms. "Every year, Kyle, it gets harder, and… I don't know. You know how I get. I—I don't know, switching gears like this, I mean, I say I can do it, I know I can do it, and we're here and it's what we do, but it gets harder."

"How so?"

Stan thought about that for a second, then shrugged, and gently pressed the cloth to the worst of the cuts on my left arm. He held it there gingerly, and I saw him formulating his words before he spoke, rehearsing them, even if the answer was to be simple. "Real life catches up to me," he said, sounding almost guilty to be admitting to such a thing. "Or, you know, what we get hinted that real life is, anyway. You know what I mean?"

"Take out the fire and brimstone and monsters?" I guessed, trying to grin.

"Yeah, exactly."

Stan lifted the cloth to examine my arm again, then poured in half of the second bowl of ice he'd brought back from the kitchen, so that the water in the basin would cool further. After testing the water again, he dipped the cloth, and set it down so that it draped, sopping wet, on my arm. "Ever wonder why that stuff always happened to all of us?" he wondered, as if consulting a higher power, not just me. "Why not somewhere else? Why not someone else? You know? Why us?" He shook his head, not ready for me to reply, since he continued, "I ask myself that shit all the time, Kyle, but for the most part, I don't want an answer.

"And I'm afraid that the longer we do this, the longer there _are_ monsters and shit like that, we _will_ know."

He definitely had a point, and I was not about to play the literal devil's advocate to speak otherwise. I hated to see him so disturbed by the idea, though. Primarily because I was feeling a little wary about having that kind of knowledge as well. Yes, growing up in South Park had subjected us to an array of odd situations over the years, and I had a feeling that such a background, as he'd pointed out, probably was going to not only catch up to us but prove some kind of importance pretty soon.

"Maybe I'm tired right now. I know I can do this, I don't mean… I'm just hoping there comes a day that…" Stan seemed more flushed and flustered as he continued speaking, but poured out his words quickly all the same, "that, I don't know, Kyle, that we can, like… stop. That we can get away. I'll stay invested for now, I mean, shit, I have to, I just—I need you to be okay, and I need to know that at some point we can… I—that we can let _life_ happen."

It was a sweet way to voice such a thought, and more or less just what I needed to keep my mind away from the pain in my arms for a while. I smiled to show that I agreed, and leaned in a bit more, to close the conversation in further around just us. "I want that, too, Stan," I told him.

"Um. You do?" His nerves seemed almost out of place, given the confidence he finally started to display.

"Yeah," I grinned. "It'd be great to get away from this someday. For now, though, Stan, honest to God, I'm gonna be all healed in about a week, you didn't do anything wrong, and we're closer than ever to getting this whole thing worked out. Let's be in this while we're in this, and then… you know, whatever happens afterward."

Stan nodded. He hesitated to check on my burns for a second, then rocked forward, shifting onto only one knee, and cradled the back of my head with one hand to hold me in for a kiss. His fingers were frigid from the ice water; the rest of his touch, warm, inviting, healing. "Cold fingers," I laughed when we parted for a second. That got a real grin out of him, but he said nothing before stealing a kiss again.

Looking a little more satisfied, he rocked back again, and brushed a few strands of rain-plastered hair out of my face. "Glad you're okay," he admitted, hardly audibly.

"Hey," I added. "Thanks for looking out for me."

"It's what I do," my boyfriend said, beaming a little. "Thanks for putting up with me getting all stupid about this."

"Oh, you're fine. Besides, even if we can't shake this shit, it wouldn't be so bad," I offered, trying to keep my tone light. "I can think of worse fates than having to be on-call superheroes forever."

"'Kay, boys, playtime's over," said Ike, strolling over to our area with Karen, while Craig lingered back with his camera. Ike took a seat on a large—surprise, surprise, Victorian—plush chair, and Karen perched herself on the arm of it. "Pardon our intrusion."

"How _dare_ you," I mocked him. "Any word from the other guys yet?"

Karen shook her head. "I'm kind of surprised," she admitted.

"I dunno," Stan offered. "Kenny's worried about Red. You sure he's not just sticking it out with her? And Clyde's probably feeling the same about Bebe even if she isn't a target."

"True enough," Karen sighed. "I just know how desperate Kenny was to get talking about this. You catch any conversations tonight?"

"Did I ever," I told her.

"Great. Sorry you took a hit for it."

I shrugged. "It'll be annoying, but fine. I did get some stuff out of them, though," I said. "And honestly, I'm glad we're here."  
"In Henrietta's library?" Karen half-joked.

"Exactly."

Craig opened the door at the same time Stan remembered, "Oh, yeah, I've got that thing from that one guy…"

As Stan began digging through his duffel bag, Token wandered back in from the rooms beyond the oddly-decorated hall. Once in the room, he took out another clean, dry cloth, and helped get my arms dried. Stan removed from his duffel bag the arm band he'd wrestled off one of the Infras before an explosion, then washed his hands and helped, per Token's instructions, to apply a burn ointment to my arms, where Token then applied first a gauze padding, then wrapped bandages. My arms throbbed from both the burn and the new pressure, but I had to keep telling myself it'd be worth it in a week when the marks started to fade.

Wendy and Cartman were the only ones to enter the room, and while they made their non-communicative way toward us, Craig silently offered his assistance by clearing the water basin away back into the kitchen.

"Anything?" Ike asked the newcomers.

"Well, I can't find Butters." Cartman's voice wavered somewhat. Which was strange, considering how on and off he was about this whole _having the same mother as Damien_ thing.

"Keep on his wire," Wendy instructed.

"You think I'm not? I told you, it crapped out."

"If you care," I reprimanded him, "why aren't you out there looking?"

"I don't care. I'm just sayin'."

"You're an asshole," I muttered, looking away.

"That's not news." Stan rolled his eyes after he'd spoken, but moved to sit beside me so the others could form a circle with us around the table.

"Well, I'm still in search mode, Eric," Wendy said sharply, nonetheless sitting beside him with the huff of a trainer trying to get a stubborn dog to heel. "How about you do the 'best friend' thing rather than taking the 'my half brothers are evil psychopaths who want to bring on some kind of mentally-situated apocalypse' asshole route."

"Hey, I's an asshole _before_ I knew about Damien, a'ight?"

"Wow," said Token, walking around the table to sit on the other side of Wendy, "did I just hear Cartman admit to that?"

Cartman was none too pleased with that, and spat, "Oh, fuck you, Token."

"Jesus. Can we try to make this civil?" Stan interrupted. "Please?"

"Agreed," I sighed.

Henrietta joined us again, just in time, carrying a stack of weathered volumes with her. Something about that woman was that she never seemed tired. It got me wondering just a little about this whole subject of dreams… if someone who seemed sleepless as she was even had them, and, of course, what that continued research was that she wanted to do on the other side of the country.

"Wilcox is asleep," she said.

"Isn't that kind of a bad thing?" Token pointed out. "If we're up against a group trying to break the barriers between dreams and the afterlife, here…"

"That guy already lives in his own Hell," Henrietta said, very plainly, straightforwardly. She sat down on one of the velvet pillows and presented her stack of books on the low table; her eyes passed briefly to my marked-up arms, then picked up the top book in her stack: Dante's _Inferno._ Underneath it were a notebook, the _Dhol Chants,_ and, just in case, the _Necronomicon. _"I think the message we're getting is that Hell's coming for everyone else around here, whether we like it or not."

Great, go ahead and add insomnia to my list of problems, then.

"Question is," said Karen, "how are they doing it?"

"All anyone's saying is that they're 'building,'" I noted. "No elaboration on how, just that we know that they're trying to add the Spaces Between into Hell territory, meaning that they might literally be able to suck people into some kind of Hell even before death."

Karen shuddered. "They can't do that," she said tersely. "That upsets so many balances…"

"And that 'building,'" Token reiterated. "Do they mean, like, _physically?"_

"Well, they had some kinda cargo tonight," said Craig. "I'd guess, yeah."

Suddenly, Stan lifted his head. "Hey, Ike."

"Yeah?" My brother perked up from the screen of his white tablet to give Stan his attention.

"What are all the properties of those goggles again?"

"Uh…" Ike consulted his digital notes, swiping his fingers across the touch pad for a run-down of all he'd thus far collected. "Infra-red… x-ray… ultraviolet… night vision… subterranean…"

_"Yes!"_ Stan whisper-exclaimed. "I knew it."

"What?"

"Look." He presented the arm band he'd made off with during the struggle in the cul-de-sac, and patted off some of the dirt into his palm, which caused a little scatter of the stuff on the floor.

"Hey, hey, _hey,"_ the red-haired Goth warned.

"I'll clean it up," my boyfriend said, rolling his eyes. "But… yeah, I thought I recognized this."

"What is it?" Wendy wondered.

Stan grinned, and held up the dusting of little grey rocks. "Iron ore."

"Iron or what?" Cartman asked. The rest of us groaned (Wendy to the point of tugging at her hair; living with him must have been destroying the poor girl).

"No," Stan corrected as rationally as he could, nodding down at his palm, "it's _ore._ It's not surface dirt. These guys are miners."

"Look old enough to me," Cartman shrugged.

"One more pun and I fucking kill all of you," Henrietta practically erupted, smacking Cartman over the head with her quellazaire.

"Aye!" Knowing she was serious, though, he laid off, allowing Stan to continue.

Stan stood to continue with his discovery, his face lighting up now that he'd touched on something that could potentially lead us directly to the GSM. "We haven't found the Carnival location because right now they're _in_ the mountains," he speculated. "They really are physically _building_ something," Stan went on, passing the ore sample to Ike to scan into his iPad. "If they've found an iron ore deposit, there's no knowing what else they've got… let's see, sulfur… fuck, _uranium?!"_

"No," said Henrietta. "No, they can't just _build actual bridges_ between Circles." I craned my neck to look up at her, and instantly felt insecure. The thing that all of us generally liked about Henrietta was her consistent ability to stay calm under pressure. The rest of us could be stressed and beaten to hell, but she kept her calm, did her research, did not flinch.

"Well, they definitely had a truck full of iron sulfide," I pointed out.

"For fuck's sake, assholes, speak English!" Cartman shouted at me and Stan. "You fuckin' nerds talk science in bed, too? Goddammit."

_"Pyrite,"_ I said forcefully. "That better?"

"That your safety word?"

"It's fucking fools' gold," I said more quickly, to shut Cartman up. "Tenorman had a cane with some of it, and it still had the smell the mineral gives off, meaning they'd just made it."

"Good point," Stan noted. "So they've definitely got some kind of iron deposit."

"Can you track it, buddy?" Ike wondered.

"Yeah. It might be helpful if you could come with when I head to the lab, too."

"Lab?" Henrietta wondered.

"Yeah, I work at my dad's geology lab," said Stan.

"Oh, and that brings me to something else," I remembered. "You know how these guys explode on contact? I think they're made of pyrite, too. Or something like that. They're some kind of iodized iron, or a sulfide, or…"

"Golems," Henrietta said suddenly.

"What?"

"Hold on." Henrietta pursed her lips and shuffled around us to return back to her room. "One more book."

"Golems?" Karen wondered, calling after the Goth.

"I can just look it up," Ike offered, typing furiously into his tablet.

"For God's sake, Ike, put that thing down!" Karen fumed. "I trust Henrietta's sources, okay?"

"More than Google?"

Karen smacked Ike upside the head.

"Ow! Kar, _what?"_ Ike sputtered.

"Yes, more than Google. Can you use that thing for _one task at a time,_ please," Karen requested, "and finish the scan? I'm sorry, it just—it bugs me."

_"Just helping,"_ my brother said under his breath.

"How about the coil?" I wondered to keep conversation moving.

"Huh? Oh." Stan caught my drift, and passed his mineral sample to Karen so that she and Ike could continue the scan of it while he rose, brushed his hands off on his jeans, and moved to sit beside me. He washed his hands with water that hadn't yet been added to the large basin, and gingerly grasped my left hand in his, while he hovered the fingers of his right hand over my bandaged right arm. "Shit," he whispered. "Yeah, this might've been a mineral burn. I think—they _will_ go away, just as long as we keep treating 'em like any burn."

"That's good," I sighed. "I'd just be interested to know what compound they used."

"I'd guess it's whatever they've found in the mountains," Wendy offered.

"Well, at least I can use these ore samples to try to track them," Stan offered. "There's been some interest in mine preservation at Dad's lab lately, anyway, I'm sure I can find something."

"Find what?"

I hadn't even heard the door open. Neither had Stan, apparently, since we both nearly jumped at the new voice in the room. Mosquito and Mysterion were back, looking like they'd taken more than their fair share of hits from their fight. While Mosquito hung in the doorway, Mysterion stormed in, yanked off his hood, and began scouring the bookshelves and surrounding area of the front room.

"I, uh, I think I can track the GSM to wherever the Carnival is," Stan repeated for the two of them.

"You guys lock onto the helicopter radio waves?" Clyde wondered, as he slid off his mask. There was then movement behind him, and, dejectedly, Bebe limped in through the door, her dress torn, hair matted, and face streaked with dirt and tears.

"Oh, my God," I let out under my breath. "Guys, what happened?"

Clyde led Bebe in with an arm around her shoulders. Shaking, Bebe held her hands out to take her fiancé's mask from him, and she held it delicately as she made her way to a chair near a bookshelf to the left of the door. When she set the mask down on the table beside the chair, which held nothing else but a dish of keys, I noticed that, just as it had been illustrated in the painting downstairs, that iconic mask of Mosquito's had been splattered with blood.

Bebe didn't look at it. She didn't focus on anything, just stared down at her hands, where she clutched the fraying hem of her dress.

"What happened?" I repeated. "Bebe? Guys? What—"

"You can track them?" Kenny demanded of Stan, slowly working his way out of his Mysterion tone as he disposed of his own mask. Stan nodded, bewildered. "How?"

"Dirt," Cartman tried to pass off judgmentally.

"It's true," Stan cut in, before Kenny could retaliate. "I-I found ore on this one guy tonight. I bet they're at a site from one of the old mines. I'm going to track them, Kenny, don't worry."

"Can you start now?"

Okay, if I wasn't worried before, I definitely had to be now. I stood, and involuntarily winced a little when the burn marks on my arms sent jolts through my entire body. That couldn't bother me, though, I couldn't let it. Not when Clyde, Bebe and Kenny all looked so downright miserable. Looking at them, you'd think someone—

"I can't right now, dude," Stan said, giving Kenny all his pre-empted sympathy. "It's late and I don't have the key to the geology lab—"

"Pick the lock," Kenny said sternly.

"Kenny—"

_"Pick,"_ he repeated forcefully, through clenched teeth, _"the lock."_

"What," I demanded again, "is going on?"

Just like Bebe had, just as Clyde was doing, I realized, Kenny was avoiding eye contact with anyone. As if doing so would push him over the edge.

"They took her."

That was all that needed to be said… and pretty much the only thing I expected to hear from Kenny for quite a while. Angered at the situation, and probably a great deal at himself, he turned away from us and stormed down the hall to Henrietta's room, in search of answers I could read in his expression he was not expecting to find.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Note:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Chapter ten! In which Stan's geology background becomes handy. XD Couldn't resist… and they're going to start the hunt in the next chapter… ^^

Again, this chapter goes hand in hand with chapter 9; there will be a bit of overlap in the next chapter as well, but for the most part, things are going to be moving forward. We may or may not find out exactly what happened to Red… D:

Wow so our schedules are totally wonky lately (during Cthulhu Fhtagn we were way more open haha), so the next updates will be posted in my profile, but I do want to have one up by… **Wednesday, September 26****th****!** Because the second half of Season 16 starts, hurrah! So we'll aim for then. Regular updates should be back in October. :3

Thank you so much for sticking with this series! (And a big thank you to the new recommendation on TV Tropes, that was very kind!) We're really excited to bring you the continuation of this story, so just another couple weeks of a slow schedule, but we shall see you on the 26th! Many many thanks for reading; we'd love to hear your thoughts~ ^^

~Jizena and Rosie Denn~

_– – –_


	11. Ep 11: Nightmares

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kenny_

I wanted to give them a taste of their own fucking nightmare. Trouble was, I didn't know how. My own life had just turned into one big personal Hell.

They'd taken her. That was all I knew. I didn't know how, or when—I only knew why. To get to me. And they left me nothing. No breadcrumbs, no note, nothing. She was just gone.

I can remember Bebe babbling something out in tears, and Clyde trying to console both of us, though still shaken himself.

And then I was sleep-walking. Possibly. I still can't be sure. I wasn't then, and I never will be. But it felt like the puzzle of reality broke, and in my mind I was running to the rounded corners of the earth trying to fill in the gaps.

Only I couldn't, because I'd fallen through. I was drifting, in both mind and body, and I had no control.

Voices reached me—maybe they were speaking at that very moment, or maybe they were memories from years ago.

My vision flashed black and white—black and white—fire—black and white—red—fire—RED.

Bebe's voice: "They broke in, I don't know how, I don't know how, I don't—!"

Clyde's voice: "Iron Maiden, there was nothing, you're sure?"

The clanking of armor as the hero shook his head.

Clyde's voice: "Play back the security tapes! Kenny. _Kenny,_ we're going through—"

Damien's voice: "Got a coin?"

Clyde's voice: "—the tapes to see if we can find anything. Are you paying—"

Damien's voice: "The fee?"

Red's voice: "I dreamed about you last night."

Clyde's voice: "ATTENTION?!"

I woke up.

Briefly.

Not having known whether or not I'd fallen asleep.

The world melted back; for a moment, the puzzle was fixed, and I could see more or less clearly. Focusing was hard. Breathing was difficult.

I felt a rope around my neck and cried out.

"KENNY!"

Two sets of hands were then shaking me, and I came to. I blinked once, but my lids felt as if they'd closed for a full minute; in front of my eyes flashed a remembered image of Damien in the Goths' office, grinning at me, mocking me. What did he want from me?

_"Hell wants you back."_

"Kenny, man, come _on!"_ Clyde barked at me again.

One more shake from both him and Bebe, and I felt my feet on solid ground again, saw the world in front of me. I felt for my neck, discovering nothing. If anything was wrapped around me, it was guilt and failure.

"You back?" Clyde asked.

I cleared my throat and nodded.

The couple sighed, and stepped back. Weaker on my feet than I ever cared to be, I took a few steps back against the center table. My eyes passed over to the whiteboard at the head, bearing our particular goals, questions and targets, and found myself not even wanting to read it. I glanced over at Iron Maiden, who was watching the monitor, tape after tape from recorded security.

"I'm so sorry, Kenny," Bebe said under her breath. "I'm so sorry. I wasn't even with her, I thought Timmy was. I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, she was gone."

"And you didn't see anything?" Clyde checked with Iron Maiden.

"Timmy…"

Clyde sighed. I made myself breathe.

"Come on, dude," Clyde said, clapping a hand on my back a couple times. "Let's get moving, we're not gonna get at Damien if we just sit around here. You doing okay?"

"He's going to try to kill me," I felt myself say in response.

"What?"

"Damien," I grumbled. "He wants me in Hell for some reason. And I bet he knows that the only fucking thing that'd get me there is if they kil—"

I couldn't finish my sentence. I choked, and bit my tongue. I had no idea why I wasn't crying yet. Honestly. I don't fucking cry, but something had just fucking happened to Red, and we were left with no hints.

Seconds whirled past me like nothing as we left the building. Iron Maiden went ahead of us, revving the speed on his own set of wheels, while Bebe shakily opened up her Mini for me and Clyde. I lay across the back, watching the rainy streets skim by on our way back to The Tenth Circle, while Clyde retained his own silence, glowering at his blood-stained mask on the dashboard.

After a few minutes, I heard Clyde ask, "What's this?"

"What?" Bebe asked.

He'd opened the glove compartment, probably for something to wipe clean his mask, and had drawn out a narrow white envelope. "You get a parking ticket, babe?"

"No, that's not a—" Bebe started, then accidentally pounded the gas pedal, jerking us forward through the rain, her nerves rising as she continued, "Clyde… Clyde, hon, that isn't a—"

"Oh… fuck…"

Clyde spun in his seat, and handed the envelope to me. "Dude, they left you something."

"Give me that," I snapped, sitting up with a start.

The envelope was indeed addressed to me, in Damien's flowery, self-important penmanship. The back was not sealed shut; the triangle tip of the envelope had been securely tucked into the pocket, rather. Not bothering to be careful, I opened the flap, and extracted from the narrow envelope a simple sheet of parchment paper, folded lengthwise around thin red cardstock.

My eyes were blurry and my vision wandered, but I forced myself to read. For all that they were—persistent, infuriating, downright dirty in their methods—at least those involved with this so-called Carnival were _informative._ Denizens of Hell, from the Dark Prince himself and right on down to the lower-tiered minions and Hellhounds, seemed to like order, and abide by rules.

Hopefully, all we had to do to beat these sick fucks was break the law a little.

The parchment paper was deceptive in looking like a non-personalized note, but there was little chance that anyone other than me had or would ever see this particular memo. _"Looking for the girl of your dreams?"_ it read. _"The scavenger hunt begins in Attraction Nine, now open at the Carnival."_

…Of my 'dreams,' huh? These guys were really not giving up certain themes when it came to making up these so-called 'attractions.'

Unless—

Unless this time they weren't just making references.

Panicking, I picked up the red cardstock. It was, as I should have assumed simply from the shape of the envelope, a ticket, very similar to the one Kyle had shown me, that Ike had received, several days ago. _Admit One._ There again was that 1920s font, the name of _Infernal Majestic Management._

They were forcing those of us in the League to participate. Testing us to make us willingly head toward these 'attractions' of theirs… every last one of which had to be a Space in its own right.

Bebe parked before I could begin to explain what I'd found within the envelope, and as I felt rage rise inside me for the want to go after Damien and Tenorman right then and there, I felt my steps swagger upon hitting the pavement. I pulled up my hood, and either lightning flashed or my own sense of sight did; I could not be sure.

Grief weighted me down yet again, and my heart pounded for answers.

_Dreams. Attraction Nine._

And then, all that mattered to me was that they'd taken her. Damien was snatching people away for this Carnival left and right, and though the GSM had 'recruited' several others…

What were they going to do to Red…?

I felt like I was having a nightmare.

For nearly five solid years, Red had been my sanity. She had been my air and water and everything that kept me alive. Thanks to her, I knew what living could really be. I'd learned that my life had potential, that I could be so devoted to one other person.

I felt like I had once locked myself behind bars, as Mysterion. I'd chosen the life of a vigilante, knowing that I could not die, and wondering if there would ever be a day when I could have a functional, mortal life. Almost to the point at which being just plain Kenny was the façade, and at night I would escape again back behind those bars into that prison of Immortality, fighting against fate in the only way I knew how.

She'd lifted them, broken them, unlocked that barrier, and for five fucking years, Mysterion had had more than just this little mountain town to fight for. Yes, I had Karen. I would always have Karen. She needed her angel and I needed mine. Red wasn't from our world originally. She wasn't the one who needed protecting, growing up in an unsafe home.

She'd just turned into the one who protected me. Supported me. Encouraged me. In every facet of my life. I could not have wished for a better partner than her.

She swam through my head, memories like ripples—I didn't want the effect to go away. I didn't know when I'd left the car. Focus returned to my eyes when I found myself positioned beneath a lamp post, one in a long line of many.

Through the rain, I saw shadows—twisting forms and figures, some slightly human, others like beasts.

I took out my pistol and fired at one of them.

"STOP!"

My arm was yanked back and my vision flashed white.

No, that one was lightning.

"Kenny, what the _actual fuck,_ right now, dude, come _ON!"_

When I couldn't shake myself, I heard Mosquito—he must have re-masked—apologize right before smacking me across the face. Upon finally opening my eyes, I was looking down. In the tiny, hazy pool of light from the lamp post, my shadow was still. I wondered if it would move again.

The envelope containing the red ticket was tucked inside my clothes, at my shoulder, to keep it away from the rain; I felt it there like a scar, underneath the fabric of my uniform, becoming drenched and heavy from the downpour. Carefully, Mosquito extracted the gun from my hand, tucked it into his own utility belt, and wordlessly guided me the rest of the way to the coffee shop, Bebe staggering along beside us.

I didn't want to talk to anyone when we got inside and upstairs. I didn't want to look at the wreckage on the first floor, I didn't want to have to explain that I kept on feeling like I was falling asleep and drifting through dreams. I didn't want to talk to Kyle, above all—he'd suffered some damage himself, but for some reason the only thing that I could focus on was the fact that Damien had taken Red, and not him. Which was admittedly a shitty thing for me to be thinking about, but I could not control what was making me angry, or uncomfortable, or just plain tired.

I didn't want to talk to Ike, either. He should have stayed, I thought. Kept an extra eye on things.

Were we honestly this defenseless? If the GSM was excavating the Dreamlands, it stood to reason that attacks were bound to happen even in our sleep. Where we couldn't fight. Where we could only observe.

_How the fuck could we break the rules?_

I protested when Clyde, after stealing another look at the blood-marked mask Bebe had then taken from him, insisted that we change and get on the same page with the others. Butters still wasn't back, and Stan and Henrietta had both seemed to have come up with some crucial new information for us, but it was very hard for me to focus.

"That's exactly the problem," Clyde said, when I noted that as he, Bebe (borrowing clothes from my sister, who remained in uniform) and I changed into street clothes back in Henrietta's room. "Dude, trust me, I know what this feels like." Bebe made no comment. "I _know,_ okay? And you know I'm here to take the lead if I have to, but you talked to Damien tonight. I know it's tough, Kenny, and I bet that right now all you want to do is go after that fuck, but we can't. Not yet."

I didn't have anything to say to him. Out of uniform, I felt my resilience fading. Lazily, I pulled on my shirt and jeans, then picked up the envelope from the glove box and extracted the note and ticket again.

_Attraction Nine._

Whatever that meant, the answer was at the Carnival. Which Stan could track if we could just _fucking leave._

I stole a look at Henrietta's standing cabinet, her stockpile of R'lyeh artifacts, our own small library of the things that had historically haunted men's dreams.

I'd blacked out at least twice that I could think of, since Bebe had informed me that Red was missing. Now, I felt exhausted.

Hell wanted me back. Hell wanted the Dreamlands.

Were they going to try to kill me with nightmares?

I glared at the note again, trying to keep my eyes steady. _Scavenger hunt. Attraction Nine. Dreams._ Fuck, I had to talk to Henrietta. We needed to sort out these circles, and Spaces, and rules and nightmares and dreams—

During one of my blackouts, I'd heard Red.

I knew I had, I knew I had, I _knew, _I didn't just think, I fucking _heard her,_ because she… was—there…? My gaze shifted almost without my meaning over to Henrietta's desk, upon which was a copy of the chart from the _Dhol Chants._ Cautiously, I stepped over to it, and let the lines blur before my eyes. There were Spaces Between the circles. Lines connecting point to point.

Between, there was grey. There were dreams. There were nightmares. They were Spaces that existed on their own, ignored the Divine Rule of Three… but Spaces that could be reached by the awake and living nonetheless. Just because we couldn't see them all the time didn't mean that others couldn't be trapped there.

Stan had just found physical clues as to where the Carnival was located. Henrietta had the charts. Wilcox had those fucking horrible paintings, each of which, I was now convinced, was all a part of this Divine Rule-bending game Damien was shoving us into. That game that somehow would allow them to extend Hell's reaches.

And who plays a game unless there's a prize involved?

"That fucker," I muttered.

"What?" Clyde wondered faintly.

"That _fucking asshole!"_ I shouted, smacking the desk.

I grabbed the chart off of the desk, and stormed back out to deal with the others. I blinked and saw three flashes of white light, but ignored it. I was exhausted. My shadow followed me as normal shadows do.

Maybe that nightmare was over already.

Damien had tired of it, and was pushing my limits in a different direction. Whatever was happening, whatever his plans were, I was through assuming. I'm not so much about rules as I'm just about _business._ It was my fucking job, as Mysterion, to stop his little project, and fast.

But he'd made this much, much too personal, as well. Red was in the Dreamlands… that was the only explanation that made sense to me. Maybe the best way to unlock anything about those was to sleep, to invite dreams and nightmares in, but Henrietta knew of another way. She had the charts.

She'd told me about Alhazred's lamp. The lamp that could illuminate the Spaces around us that we could not see. The artifact that shed light on the dreamlands. A veritable telescope from one dimension to the other. If it was something once truly owned by the madman who had penned the _Necronomicon,_ then I believed wholeheartedly in its ability to help us. We just needed it.

If I could find that lamp of Alhazred's that Henrietta had talked about—yes, yes, _that_ would give me a chance. And it didn't take me long to guess that Damien had it. He had to. It was a spy tool into the Dreamlands, it was their ticket around the unconscious version of the living world.

Despite this discovery I'd made on my own, when I took my place in the circle with the others, as I listened to Henrietta go on about fabricated creatures called Golems, as I listened to Stan and Kyle and Ike discuss soil, as I listened to Cartman complain and Wendy worry and Token and Clyde try to keep the peace… my brain just kept going back to that lamp. The charts.

Light up what shadows remained, Kenny. Go on that scavenger hunt.

They weren't going to use her, they weren't going to use her, they weren't going to kill me, the nightmares wouldn't spread. If we acted. Now.

God fucking damn this was exhausting to think about.

I wanted to move forward.

But in many ways, I just wanted to sleep.

I just wanted to sleep.

– – –

_Butters_

My bleak past nipped at my heels as I ran townward from the dismal Docks. Lightning exploded in the sky, illuminating the boxy silhouettes of the town I gave up one-third of my identity to heal.

Disarray.

Disarray… _Disarray!_

Why had I not connected the mind-numbing logic behind the possibility of that return?

Not even death in the maw of timeless, embodied chaos could break the strings that puppetmaster once had tied around this town. Everything was just another plot to him. Just another stepping stone to get exactly what he wanted. What a nightmare. What a bizarre, terrible, horrible nightmare. He really was pulling strings. Then, now, as long as he had a soul confined somewhere within some desolate circle of existence.

Pulling strings, breaching circles, and capitalizing on Tenorman's odd brand of personal insanity and bitterly violent tendencies in order to raise his status in Hell.

I knew that was what he was after. I remembered his methods all too well. He could not be underestimated. Even in death. Especially in death.

Hell was just a playground to General Disarray.

Just a curiosity.

Just a Carnival.

He really was just one darkness-drenched, miserable soul trying to destroy the world. But he wasn't a devil in the way that Damien was, not a fabricated creature like those GSM Infras we had been fighting. His was a human soul that, many, many, many years ago had known a glimmer of camaraderie and compassion.

Therefore, he was dangerous.

Now, I've read scriptures before. I've heard plenty of sermons about Hell. I have ingested my fair share of warnings about the Devil tempting Man, about greed and pride and lust and every other sin… but Disarray… Dougie—that kid, that young man, that tortured spirit—God, he could do more damage than any Devil I'd ever heard stories about. He could tempt, and pry, and twist and mold…

Was he really the one holding every last string in this Carnival operation…?

I certainly wasn't going to check that possibility off of my list.

His soul really was evil. I sure knew how to pick 'em, huh?

But—

But I was Harmony, now. Balance. Equality. I was the one who healed, and nurtured. Mended. Made right.

He wasn't going to tempt me back.

Disarray's Chaos, Nyarlathotep's Chaos, was not mine. Not that nightmare. Never again.

…Never? Never is a negative space. 'Never' is even a kind of tempting word itself, isn't it…?

NO. Never again. There were three things that I'd recently told myself I would never, ever do. I was never returning to my parents. I was never going to settle for less than who and what I wanted to be. And I was never, ever going to put my friends in danger at my own hands. Meaning no Chaos. No room for Chaos.

There is no perfect world.

But there is balance.

And that could not fall to Disarray.

It took me around an hour to realize that someone had been trying to contact me over the wire. When I finally snapped to my senses to answer, I had to duck behind a building, away from the rain; water pounded the pavement around me as I listened in to Wendy's frantic, worried tone, and Eric's forceful, short one. Both insisted upon the same thing, though:

"Come back to the Goths' place. We need you before we can make a plan, and things really aren't looking too good right now…"

I was booking it to the shop before I could hear more. All I knew was that I needed and wanted to be there. Re-group with my friends, reaffirm for myself that… well, that Disarray had no control.

When I returned to the Tenth Circle, chaos greeted me, all the same. The scene was a disaster unfinished: claw marks scattered here and there along the outer walls and pavement, shattered glass glistened on the tarmac when lightning struck the stars.

Iron Maiden was stationed at the door, which looked like it had just been fixed. "What happened?" I asked my teammate. He simply lowered his gaze, and motioned for me to go inside. He was a man of very few words, but I knew shock and speechlessness when I saw it.

Inside, tables were all askew throughout both rooms. The service counter looked like it had been hit by many different forms of natural disaster. The paintings looked much more at home. But resting on one righted, claw-footed mahogany table was a green military canvas bag, which I recognized as my own, right away.

I had purchased the bag among other things I'd needed to give Agent Harmony that sort of 'war-nurse' feel I was going for with the design; I darted for the bag, now, snatched it off the table and rushed to the ladies' room.

The mirror over the three sinks had been punched and scratched in several places. There was blood splattered at just below my own eye level.

I went to the mens' room.

Once inside the too-quiet facilities, I hefted the bag onto the sink counter and tore into it, discovering two sets of street clothes. If Iron Maiden was here, so was Red Serge; they would have thought to bring changes of clothes for everyone… meaning that I was probably last to have arrived, if only my bag had been there in the front room. Stuffed into my own was a choice of a couple of shirts, and either a knee-length white skirt and blue leggings or a pair of jeans; either a set of blue flats or beaten sneakers.

I debated for only a moment before insisting to myself that the circumstances more or less demanded that I remain Marjorine. I had to. Because a good part of me still held myself, Butters, responsible. Butters went off Disarray's deep end. Marjorine helped bring me back—over and over and over again she did that.

Moving at a fast and frantic pace, I pulled my sopping hair out of its tight bun and stripped off my soaked uniform, using the looser of the two shirt choices as a towel to pat myself dry. A quick heart skip had me diving back into the bag to check for… yes, there it was: my makeup case. Birthday gift from Red last year, a promo item from her store; I kept dry cloths in there as well, and cleaned off my face a bit more once I'd pulled on my ruffly blue top, the skirt and leggings.

My hair was tangled like a briar bush, and as much as I didn't want to deal with it, I made myself, just for the sake of getting my mind off of having seen Dougie. He wasn't a ghost… I doubted he was even a zombie. He was just right fucking there. There and then gone, like a bolt of lightning. Like a really bad dream.

I dug for my brush and yanked at my blonde snarles. Only a few brush strokes in and I was already shouting, "Fuck split ends!" I had to get upstairs. I kept hearing movement over my head, and I knew it was someone pacing. Kenny, probably, or Wendy while she waited for me. Maybe Stan, who'd been in contact with me as Toolshed in regards to my having followed Disarray.

I had to get upstairs, I had to get upstairs. No dallying, just do it—

Suddenly, I felt like time had slowed to a crawl. I was pushing myself to just get dressed, get made up, go, go, go… but as I threw on my foundation, my shadow, my liner, quicker than my normal routine, I just felt like I was stuck in a vortex. Or that time might even have been going backward.

When I stood back to check my reflection, I still thought I looked like a mess. I had to leave my hair down or it'd never dry, so it fell in untamed, half-brushed spindrels to my shoulders, the torn ends dripping rain water onto my shirt. For about two seconds, I screamed internally when I got thinking that I kind of looked like my mom, all messed up and troubled and sleepless and seething with nerves.

Hardly thinking, I grabbed for my foundation again, and before I knew it I was caking on another layer underneath my eyes, to hide the dark circles that sagged there.

Chaos hardly slept. That alone could have killed me.

"Stop, stop, stop, what are you doing? Stop," I muttered to myself as I blended in the perfect-match cream. "Stop, STOP!" I screamed. I threw down the foundation, and stepped back, grabbing at my hair.

Staring at the mirror again, I said, "You look fine. You look like Marjorine, not anyone else. You look fine, go upstairs, go, just stop, just go!"

Stop. Go.

I ran upstairs.

When I knocked on the door to the flat, I heard Wendy say, "Oh, thank God," and then it was she who opened the door to let me in. One look at me, though, and my good friend threw her arms around me and squeezed tight. "Marjorine, honey, you're shaking," she observed. "What is it?"

"I, um—I saw—" I began, suddenly at a loss for how to form words.

"Come in, come here," she beckoned, taking my rain-frozen fingers and leading me gently into the flat.

I was not the biggest fan of that bleak front room of the Goths' place, but I sucked up my numerous discomforts in order to join in the circle of my friends and teammates. Wendy sat me down on the floor between her and Eric, who grunted and moved over so that I could have one of the two pillows he'd been taking up. I noticed Token pass Wendy a little glance, but tried not to read too far into it.

Eric, though, in a weird moment of interest in others' well-being, checked over Wendy and me both as he grudgingly passed over the velvet pseudo-seat. Uncomfortable as I was with the Disarray issue, that glance, at least, made me smile. I'd accepted at this point that Eric and I were fated to be struggling friends—at best.

In the vein of caring so deeply for such good friends, I couldn't help but put much of my immediate focus on Stan, who seemed equal parts balanced and conflicted. He was seated directly between Kyle and Kenny, and Stan seemed to be the most stable of the three… which still wasn't saying much. But he was holding all three of them up, somehow, just by retaining neutrality, by looking ready to be the right kid of aide for whoever needed it. Kyle's arms were bandaged, wrists to elbows. And Kenny—

I knew that look.

Oh, shit, oh, shit, I knew that look.

Kenny McCormick was having a waking nightmare.

Now, we two had never been very close as friends… I was closer to Red than to Kenny… but for goodness' sake, he was the League leader. Mysterion. The guy who beat Immortality. He did not give up… not that I'd seen before. But right now, he just looked awful. Swimming. He couldn't find himself.

They'd done something to him. They, the Movement, the Carnival, everyone involved.

In that moment, I knew more or less exactly what Disarray and Damien were up to. They were poisoning him. They'd hit the bulls-eye of one of their targets.

Hell was trying to kill Kenny.

Those bastards.

I listened intently as the others caught me up on the macabre happenings in their own fights, but all the while, every lobe of my brain was still throbbing, aching, re-watching the exact moment General Disarray presented me with my old tinfoil helmet. I burned with the want to move forward. We all did. But the GSM—whatever kind of twisted legion they had now become—were tirelessly pushing us back. Back even further than just the past four years, now I thought about it.

Every weird thing that had ever happened in our town… the more I listened to what the others had to say, the more convinced I became that there had to be some connection. Something had drawn all those things here, year after year since we were little kids.

Whatever it was, the answer lay within the League. And that was exactly what Henrietta stated herself.

"Know what?" she said, puffing out a stream of white-grey smoke. "I think the universe hates you."

"Wow. That's _real comforting_ right now," Stan lashed back, shooting her a scathing glare, "thanks."

"No," Henrietta defended herself flatly, "I mean, you guys don't play by rules."

"What?" Kyle wondered, when the Goth set her eyes on him.

Henrietta set the quellazaire to her lips again, and the room fell silent, all of our ears filled with nothing but the muted sound of rain at the window as we waited for her to expand upon her thought. "You don't," she exhaled. "Look at all of you. Weird shit always happened to all you guys."

"Ch'yeah," the red-haired Goth snorted from off in the corner, where he was rummaging through a side table drawer for a pack of matches, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. "We used to make fun of you for it."

"This is all super nice of you," Kyle grumbled, "but can you kinda get to the point?"

Kenny heavily rolled his head in Kyle's direction, and Kyle shivered as if Kenny had just poured ice over him. Kenny really did not seem to be holding himself up well. He was drifting, and I saw on everyone else's faces the concern that he'd been dealt too many awful blows. With Red missing, Kenny's focus kept getting distracted. I mean, heck, I sure knew that if I had a kind of relationship like the two of them had, I'd be pretty sore, too, so it was painful to look at, from an outside, friend's perspective.

"The point is," said Henrietta, "Hell's army, or whatever it is this Thorn guy's got right now, is probably gonna try to weed some of you guys out, or else pull you in. Almost all of you have some kind of quirk. Kenny was Immortal. Craig, you, uh…"

"Yup," said Craig.

"Stan's died before, and you," Henrietta said, pointing at me, "you had all sorts of—"

"I know," I said, when she trailed off.

"As for you," Henrietta finished, looking at Eric, "I bet if they've got a list of most wanted for being rule-breakers, you're at the top of it. And Kyle, I'm surprised you even made it back here tonight." He nodded stiffly.

"Tenorman—" Kyle began, then sat back, to check in with Henrietta, since it was not always the best idea to interrupt a Goth mid-thought. She took another drag off of her stemmed cigarette, though, which prompted Kyle to continue. "Tenorman talked to me a little about what these guys are doing," he said. "They obviously know about my, um, my quirk; they've got dirt on all of us. He called me an 'attraction,' like, Carnival-type shit… and he was talking about Hell. Like, Hell being in your head. How it's personal, and they're trying to bring that kind of thing back, since Hell as a place has changed in recent centuries or whatever…"

Well, gee, I coulda told him that.

I'd been living in Hell for a long, long time before I finally broke out of it, before I left home, did things to better myself, and made efforts within the League.

Of course real Hell is in your head. And it's unforgiving, and violent, and it grips you, fills you with hatred, takes away who you were by altering what you love. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I understood why Tenorman would know about it. His personal Hell must have been awful; traumatizing.

He and Chaos might not have been so different, that way. Maybe that's why Disarray had gone after him.

"Oh." At this point, Kenny shakily pulled forward a small envelope. "Speaking of attractions."

He drew forth a thin red ticket, nearly a twin to the one tacked up on the corkboard back at the base, and a note, which, rather than display them out for all of us to see, he entrusted only to his sister. Karen took the items, and sat back next to Ike, where they could study them further. "I don't get it," Ike observed. "Why would they send you a ticket _and_ a letter?"

"I hate this," Karen commented, on a weaker tone than her boyfriend's. "Kenny, they just really want to get at you, don't they? I _hate_ this."

"What's on the ticket?" Wendy asked. "Or, note, or—?"

"He made explicit reference to dreams," Kenny said, sounding short of nerves; none of us had to guess who the 'he' in question was. "They've _got Red,_ okay? They took her to get at me, and well, congratulations to those assholes because this is really _fucking low."_

"Kenny," Stan tried.

Kenny ignored him and barreled on, "They took her, she's at one of their fucking 'attractions,' and I'm pretty damn sure he's got her _in_ the Dreamlands."

"They shouldn't be able to make bridges—" Henrietta mused, looking off.

"Well, they are," Kenny interrupted. "So if we're going to stop them, can we just _move?_ Stan, you can track them, so come on."

Oh, dang, maybe I wasn't going to be able to share my own terror-filled evening with the others just yet. With Kenny this mad, too, I wondered if it'd be worse or better for me to drop the news later.

"Kenny, it's really late," Stan tried to reason with him, "and there's more to talk about, too—"

"Then we can talk on the way. Come on. We're finding that Carnival."

"Tonight?" Clyde asked, trying to be firm in an argument against the idea.

_"Tonight."_

There was no swaying him.

Even though Kenny looked real tired—heck, even though a lot of us were pretty close to exhaustion—we, especially after a nod from Karen, worked out a fast plan that would hopefully be the best course of action for everyone. Stan agreed to pick the lock at the geology lab and run tests, but to only get as far as that for the night, which was a solution that Clyde seconded and Kenny eventually gave into.

Karen offered to stay behind at the Goths' with Bebe, and when Henrietta mentioned that there was still more cleanup to do, Wendy offered to stay behind as well. Since at that point it seemed like the guys would be leaving for the lab, and the girls would be staying, I opted to stick around at the coffee shop as well. Primarily because I had two people I really wanted to talk to about my brush with Disarray, and Wendy was more level-headed than Eric. Plus, Eric was heading to the lab, and Kenny might not be too keen on side conversations.

Before we could head out, though, Eric grabbed me by the elbow and yanked me aside. He drew me over to the Wall of Nazi Conformist Fucks that the Goths took such pride in, and as media and political icons stared blankly out at us from posted newsprint, he said, "Level with me, bitch."

"About what?" I asked pointedly.

"About wha—dude. You saw somethin'."

"Yeah, I did," I grumbled. "Disarray."

"What?"

"I saw General Disarray," I whispered. "Well, Dougie."

Eric's eyes flared open. "The fuck? He died!"

"Well, where was he gonna go," I realized, "Detroit?"

"Fuckin' shit, why didn't you say somethin'?"

"Cuz Kenny's all sore, and I'll talk about it later, Eric, sorry!"

I realized then that I didn't have much of an argument_ against_ discussing Disarray with everyone, but the plan was already in action for the remainder of the evening, and at least the truth was out. 'Course, now I wished I had more than thirty seconds to talk about it.

"Right." Eric paused.

"…So…?" I prompted, waiting for him to start up on some huge (if idiotic) revelation.

"So—Butte—_Marjorine."_ Eric heaved out a forced sigh. "So you must get it, is all I'm sayin'."

"Get what?" I asked.

"Tenorman? Kenny's thing? That Disarray asshole? Dude, we buried all this shit a long time ago."

"I know. It's obnoxious," I admitted.

"Maybe. But…"

"What?"

"What if that's just how it is?" he noted. He folded his arms, and drummed the fingers of his right hand against his left forearm.

_"What?"_ I insisted

"Fate. How you an' me an' Kenny're all kinda… what's it… predisposed to be, like—?"

"How _dare_ you," I scolded him, getting in his face. "What, saying we're supposed to be, what…?" I challenged. Eric shrugged. "What, _evil?_ That's just—just _don't."_

"Old Ones, Hell? I just figure, like, what if." Eric trailed off, then looked away as he muttered out, "Then there's Chaos."

I tried so hard not to snap. I spoke firmly, but I did not snap. "Eric, we're not _supposed to be evil._ Well, that's just stupid, and childish, and I don't want to hear it!"

"But what _if."_

"Then we fight it," I grumbled. "Fight even if it hurts you a little along the way. That's why we're all here, isn't it?"

"Here?"

"In the League," I stressed. Going the only route I knew, I shoved him into the wall and said, "None of us would be here, none of us would be heroes, if we didn't believe that we could do something about the nightmares the people of this town have to face. I believe in my work, Eric, we're people who do good things for others, and we've gotta do good for ourselves, too. I believe you're a good person. I like being your friend and I'm sorry if I've fucked that up along the way, but all I want from you is to just know that _you'll_ see the good you're capable of doing, too. Okay? The Coon is a _hero._ Don't forget that."

"I wasn't gonna," Eric fumbled back at me, lightly shoving me off. "I just think other people might. Anyway, they're all after Kenny again, anyway."

Oh. Damn, I thought, Eric was going through a lot. He still hadn't been home to see his mother. He still pushed buttons on all his friends, like always. But he was hurting, still, from the information about Damien. But now that Red was gone, we weren't going to make any headway into Eric's ties quite yet.

"…Tell you what," I offered, eyeing him to make sure he wasn't going to turn the conversation around somehow, looking for the wrong kind of pity, "I want to help you. I want to help you sort out this whole Damien thing. If that means I talk to your mom, or if that means we just do some research on the side, whatever."

"Are you seriously?"

"I'm seriousl—I'm serious," I said. "I'd just be helping you out on your own hunt for answers. Remember, like how we used to?"

Eric blanched. "You're not gonna make me take you out again," he said, worried but solid.

"Oh, my God, Eric, just—can we be adults and… and move past that?" I asked him, sad to know that I'd burned that bridge. "I like helping you out, so I will. That's all. Plus, this is something we can't just _ignore,_ you know? Don't go assuming that you have to be tied to the darker perceptions of Hell just because you're related to Damien. Maybe this just means you can push him back."

He thought about my words for a second, then was on his way with only a slight, "Thanks," after Clyde made the last call.

Things may have been scattered at the moment, but I had to hold onto hoping that soon, every one of us in the League could build our own bridges in between these disjointed facts. As long as we were all on the same page—that we didn't just have to _push_ back, we had to _fight_ back—we could keep ourselves alert, awake. Our enemies were making individual attacks. It was best to fight back as a team.

Chaos demanded balance, if it was ever to be righted at all.

When the guys had left (but for Iron Maiden, the two Goths skulking around their apartment upstairs, and the sleeping Wilcox), Wendy, Bebe, Karen and I began our clean of the two large service rooms of the first floor. Henrietta stayed back at the mangled circular counter, taking stock of broken ceramics and equipment, and stealing glances at her illustrated old copy of Dante's _Inferno,_ scouring the weathered pages for hints toward the best move we could make next.

Wendy hung back for a few minutes, consoling Bebe and working with Karen on specifics for our individual tasks, while I made my way into the far room, where the band had been set up. I grabbed the Goths' old-fashioned straw broom, and started sweeping debris. Shattered glass, napkins, scraps of fabric, and dust… dust, dust, dust. Pyrite, according to Stan. I wondered if I should save any of it, before I figured we had what we needed. The guys were running tests. Tracking down targets. We'd make our way in, soon.

But I just kept thinking: what then?

We'd make it to the Carnival… and what then? Hell itself had always seemed so… _final_ to me. But it really was a living, breathing thing all its own. Anyone with an active consciousness could perceive Hell. I hated being so tied to Fate; these things were always, _always_ in my head, on my mind. Oh, I'd known Hell.

I'd known Hell like a brother. I'd grown up with it.

Which was part of the reason why I wished Eric would just talk to me. He was the primary outlier, the link between Earth and Hell and R'lyeh, not by curse, as Kenny had been… but _by blood._ Hell lived in him. Eric had caused nightmares himself, before. But here he was, still one of the heroes. He had to see that, before Damien could really crawl under his skin.

See, Eric wasn't usually the kind of person who could recognize such things about himself. The fact that he'd mentioned it to me at all made me hopeful, though: hopeful that I could help him if he needed it…

I had accepted, a long time ago, that I was the sum of three parts. That was what helped me understand harmony. I'd lived Hell, I got it, I got rid of it. I balanced out. Eric, however… oh, Eric was all his own. He had two other forces _outside_ of himself, influencing him. Scott Tenorman, Eric's brother from his father's side, was the force of Eric's violent, sociopathic leanings. His worldly wrongdoings.

The sins that boy had committed.

Damien, brother on Eric's mother's side, tallied those sins, and I was afraid of what he'd do to use them against Eric in the long run.

Then, there was Eric himself. The guy who did a lot for personal gain, who acted out even into his adulthood with methods that would give him winning outcomes, no matter the situation. That made him a fighter. But what if, the more he recognized that Fate really was a force on his life, he finally gave up? Stopped fighting?

Eric made me so gosh darn angry sometimes. He pushed all our nerves. He'd say one thing, mean another, go along with something just to strike it all down. Whatever. But—I just could not help wondering—that big _what if? What if_ his two blood relatives disrupted the already tumultuous sort of balance that made up his ego? _What if_ whatever they were preparing at the Carnival pushed him over the edge?

_What if_ Fate just really wanted him to be a part of their nightmare?

And then, after that, what about the rest of us, as Henrietta had been saying? What about Craig, and his tie to the Incan prophecy? What about Kenny—was Fate even going to let him stay alive? What about Stan's nightmares, Kyle's telekinesis, my balance, Wendy's all-too-eerie resemblance to the woman in Wilcox's _Fraud_ painting?

What about Karen, too…?

I kept thinking about Fate like it was something just as breathing and vivid as Hell, as if it had a face and a personality. But, I realized, Fate was my perception of what Henrietta called that Divine Rule.

Fate was universal law. The rules Hell played by… up until now. I wondered if even Damien was going against certain rules by building bridges between the Spaces Between the three terrestrial circles of Earth, Heaven and Hell.

Gosh, my head hurt thinking about all that.

I started singing a little to myself as I swept up, just a little ditty I'd been humming for years and years that still didn't have all that much meaning to me, and looked around at the paintings. The one that got to me most was actually one of the simplest ones there. Yes, they were all disturbing in their own right. There was a carousel horse—what that had to do with _Gluttony,_ I couldn't tell—and a forest with red nooses: _Treachery._ The blank white one called _Pride._

But I just had this weird feeling about the one entitled _Violence._ It was the GSM symbol. Very straightforward. Yet jarring. Maybe because it was a hand-painted version, rather than the clean print. Something about it I didn't like, though.

The imperfect balance of it, maybe…? Three straight lines of three red circles; a large unbroken circle around them.

Something about the way that I was looking at it was bugging me, I realized. Like I could fill in the gaps in my head, where things weren't connected. Like I could see the spaces between.

"Marj?"

"Wahh!" I exclaimed, tightly clasping the handle of the broom. I'd been so lost in thought, I hadn't heard Wendy walk in.

"Hey, sweetie, sorry about that," my dear friend said, walking up to give me a pat on the shoulder. "How are things coming along in here?"

"Oh, uh, okay," I answered. "Sorry, I just kinda got really into my own head there, for a second. Thanks for organizing this whole clean-up thing. Poor place needs it."

"Yeah, it does," Wendy sighed. "A lot of things need repair."

"You sure can say that again," I agreed.

Wendy followed my gaze when I looked again at the _Violence_ painting, and licked her chapped lips as she pondered its meaning.

"Is, uh… is Wilcox still upstairs?" I wondered.

"I don't think he's going anywhere," Wendy confirmed. "The Goths are keeping an eye on him, and I know Henrietta has a bone to pick with the guy. Before you got back, Kenny and she were talking about something to do with the fact that Damien was the one to commission these paintings."

"Huh," I said, glancing at the others. "I'm not surprised."

Wendy scrunched up her mouth in distaste, then walked up to the _Heresy_ painting on the back wall. I followed at a steady pace behind, still clutching tightly to the broom, as if it were my last defense at a crumbling barricade. When Wendy leaned in to sniff the canvas, I asked, "Uh, you okay?"

"I'm wondering what materials he used," Wendy said. "Like, if there's iron in the paint. I don't know. I might be looking for connections that aren't there." She stood back and sighed. "We'll just have to see what Stan and Ike and them can get from the ore sample."

"I don't think we can rule anything out as being 'not a connection,'" I admitted.

"No?"

I shook my head, then, making sure I took the time to breathe, I took hold of her hands and pulled her to the corner, where I recalled my entire night to her. Wendy's eyes widened and narrowed at different points of the story, but I made sure to leave no detail out when discussing my unplanned meeting with my dead, former accomplice.

"Oh, my God…" Wendy whispered, when I'd finished. She took my shoulders, then pulled me in to hug me. The broom was still in my hands, and it crunched against both our ribcages, but I barely noticed. "Marjorine, are you okay? Holy shit, I hadn't even thought about that!"

"Well, neither had I, Wendy. But it might be one of those connections that'll help us out a little," I offered.

"Jeez, I guess, but… oh, God, we really all need to get on the same page about this."

I nodded, then let the broom fall. Wendy stood back, and the two of us looked around the dissheveled room together. She squeezed my arm tightly, as if to say, _it's all right, you beat it, you're here,_ but even with that reassurance, all I could see was that one painting. Like it was glaring at me.

"…Hey, Wendy?"

"Yeah?"

"What do you think each of these paintings means…?" I wondered.

"What? I mean, they're sins, right?"

"Yeah, but… but they're really atypical, you know? And, like… why Clyde's mask? Why that red symbol?"

Wendy went silent for nearly a full minute. I couldn't even cue myself in on the discussions in the other room. All I heard was Wendy not talking, and my own breath. Then, she said, "Let's see what Karen thinks. And Henrietta. Bebe, too."

"You think?"

"Marj, cleanup is gonna take a few days. We might as well do some _real_ work while we're here. I was hoping we could open up some kind of conversation about it. I mean, these paintings are really weird. And I just… I want to get my head on something like that."

"Sure thing." I patted her back, and, scrutinizing the paintings once again, I led her back to the main room. "It'd be good to get talking."

When we were back with the others, however, very little work had been done. It seemed that Karen and Bebe had done a bit… chairs and tables were righted, and there was a rubbish pile going, but Henrietta was being her usual catty self and giving the other girls nothing in the way of encouragement for their work.

Then again, Bebe, so wanting to do her part as a League adjunct member, was a strong personality, and was probably a little too on the 'conformist' side of things for Henrietta's liking. "Henrietta, isn't there anything written in those _Chants_ about how to access the Dreamlands?" she was demanding as she dumped a dustpan full of swept-up nails and glass into a large tin garbage can. "If those Leng people you were talking about wrote that stuff, don't you think there'd be some kind of instruction?"

"Do you publish detailed directions to your back door?" Henrietta muttered, sorting out her books. "I don't think so."

"Okay, then, what about Hell? I know there's stuff written about the opening to Hell. Like, aren't there rivers and stuff? Isn't there something that can help the guys? I could call Clyde at the lab and we can compare notes. There's got to be something we haven't found yet."

Henrietta simply looked down and flipped back the cover of _The Inferno. _"Hold on, prom queen, I'm getting to it."

The Goth's tone didn't settle well with Bebe. Fed up, she stomped her foot and cried, "I'm sorry, but what the _fuck_ is wrong with you?"

"Um—" Wendy tried as we drew closer.

"No," Bebe stressed, holding up one hand, palm flat, toward her friend, while still staring down Henrietta. "Look," she continued, "there's really aggravating and terrifying shit going on right now, and we're all stressed and I'm upset, and I think at heart we're all in the same boat, so I'd love it if we could, like, be _nice."_

"The _world_ isn't 'nice,'" Henrietta observed.

"I know," Bebe sizzled. "Trust me, I know. But that's not a reason to be bitchy!"

"Oh, _what?"_ Henrietta barked. _"I'm_ being bitchy?"

"Bebe…" Wendy tried again. I could see the conflict escalating by the second, and tugged on Wendy's arm to get her to hold back.

"Yes," Bebe snapped at the Goth.

Henrietta scowled, and slammed her hands down on her now-open book. _"I'm_ being bitchy," she scowled sardonically. "I'm just trying to help, but I could stop at any time."

"Well, I'm just trying to help, too!" Bebe insisted.

"You fucking major in _dance._ What the hell do you know?"

Her bright blue eyes swimming in uncried tears of frustration, Bebe screamed, "I know that people do favors for each other when they're in a tight spot! I know that you're pissed at the devil, and I am, too! I know what it feels like to be locked inside your own fucking head!" I shivered; luckily, Bebe did not notice. "And guess what, Elvira? I took a classics course, so I know _damn fucking well what that THING was that ran us off the road?"_

Henrietta grimaced at what I could only assume was a Goth no-no slur, and let her voice boil as she asked, "What was it, then?"

"A wolf."

I held my breath at the same time Wendy and Karen let out tiny, half-voiced groans of a sort of, _oh, honey, you were so close _nature. Bebe held her own, though, and slid the book out from underneath Henrietta's now drumming, impatient fingers. Not taking her eyes off of the Goth, Bebe flipped through the pages until she'd reached a spot near the beginning. "There," the blonde announced, holding the book up for all of us to look at. "Just like that. A wolf."

Henrietta's eyes went momentarily wide, underneath her increasingly heavy eyelids, while Karen sucked in a startled gasp. On the page that Bebe had indicated was an ink illustration of three large beasts, gathered at the foot of a mountain. The first, in the foreground, was a she-wolf, a large Hellhound-looking thing, teeth bared, bones showing in her ribcage.

"Fuck," said the Goth, plainly.

"And next is the Leopard," Karen observed, taking a step closer to the book. Bebe, casting a smug glance at Henrietta, passed the book to the youngest in our group. Karen took the _Inferno_ with shaking hands, and pursed her lips tightly in contemplation before continuing with her thought. "The last one's a Lion."

"What're all those animals?" I wondered. Wendy left me to stand at Bebe's side, but we all ended up gathered behind Karen, still dressed, minus the utility belt, in her Angel gear. I could have sworn a light shone right onto the winged barrette she wore with her uniform.

"Hell's got quite the menagerie, if I'm remembering that class right," said Karen. "The Testaments mention all sorts of animals, I'm not surprised there are predators at the gate to Hell."

"At least they look like things we're used to," Wendy mentioned. "I mean, we can hunt down giant cats if we have to, a little more easily than some other monsters…"

"Well, we can hope it ends with these three, anyway," said Karen. "She was hard to bring down, but there's no mistaking it. That Hellhound was this wolf right here."

Henrietta snorted, getting us all to turn our attention back to her. She held out one pale hand for the book, and after a second of hesitation, Karen returned it to her. Wendy suggested under her breath that we get back to cleaning, so I busied myself with Karen so that Wendy could get some time with Bebe; we upturned another table, but Karen stopped to look at the scuffs on the floorboards.

"She's Avarice, you know," Henrietta said from the counter, just as Karen was getting a thorough look at what I knew to be claw marks. I had half a mind to check for splattered blood, though I didn't entirely want to.

"Who?" Karen asked.

"The Wolf, miss _Angel."_

"Can we do this without mocking each other?" I heard Bebe mumble.

Henrietta heard as well, but ignored the remark. She leaned over the counter, watching the rest of us try to work, and informed our group, "The She-Wolf, Lion and Leopard are three of the seven sins, according to this book. What's strange is that when Dante went through, he passed the Wolf last."

Karen stood, and glanced around. "Is there an Avarice painting?" she wondered.

_ "Greed,"_ Henrietta observed, jerking her thumb in the direction of the painting of Clyde's Mosquito mask. "Over there."

"Oh, my God… Clyde…!" Bebe yelped, grabbing out her phone with shaking hands.

"I think he's okay," Karen assured her. "I was there when we beat the Wolf… Clyde helped bring her down, so—"

"But that's _her blood_ on his mask, Karen!" Bebe fretted. "It's not coming off, is it? What if she did something to him? Oh, my God…"

"Calm down, prom queen," Henrietta commanded.

"Stop calling me that!" Bebe shrieked. "Excuse me for being concerned about my boyfriend! Bet you wouldn't know, since all you and Craig ever did was seethe and hate the world together."

"Bebe!" Wendy gasped.

"I'm sorry, but I don't like being made fun of for _caring!"_ Bebe started crying.

Henrietta did nothing in retaliation but glare at Bebe for a moment. Bebe glared right back, her phone still poised, ready to make a call or send a text. Karen slipped past me to move back toward the counter, in hopes of stealing another look at the book, but once that movement had begun, Henrietta relented to say, "Fine."

She dug under the counter, and re-emerged from underneath it to produce from the shelves below a black memo pad. Out of the headless bat ceramic beside the register, she drew a black calligraphy pen, then flipped back a few pages, and wrote the date at the top of the paper. _6/6._ "Let's make this a business meeting. Don't talk about that gushy crap with me, we're just talking business. Deal?"

"Business as in…?" Bebe asked.

"Hell. These paintings. The more specific we can be when that stupid painter wakes up, the better, but I need to talk to him about this shit, and what made him agree to take the commission."

"Let alone hang them all in your shop?" I guessed.

"That, too." Henrietta rolled her eyes.

Bebe looked down at her phone, and squeezed her fingers around it. She bit her lip, and shivered with the dripping of her still-damp curls, then quietly put that cute little phone of hers away into the pocket of the borrowed green and white dress of Karen's she was wearing. "Okay," she said. "It sucks without the whiteboard, but if it's okay, I'd like to take these notes back to the base when you're done so we have matching sets of info."

Henrietta attempted something like a nod.

Words we'd been throwing around before made their way out into the air at that point. We talked about the She-Wolf, about how hard she was to take down… about the GSM, and their numbers. Henrietta spoke more at length about what she thought they were:

Golems.

Karen was right about Hell having no shortage of beasts. Golems sounded, to me, like a mix of people, machines, and what classical texts would refer to as 'dumb beasts.' Hell's pack mules, I guess. They were creatures with form and function similar to humans, crafted to walk and talk just as any of Hell's minions could, and could be given life from an outside source… in this case, Damien's mysticism.

Damien and his father were the ones to lord over the dead. But they weren't Death itself, they didn't—or, at least, I figured they didn't—actually take life away. Souls ended up in their domain, but could not necessarily be re-animated into a physical body. No wonder Hell was pissed at Kenny, then; maybe even Stan, too. But that was where Golems came in… they were soulless creations, all of them thinking alike. And since they were made from raw materials of the earth, there was no limit to how many could be made.

Hopefully Clyde or someone would call with news from Stan's research soon.

More deserving of discussion, too, was the radio broadcast. Wherever the Carnival was, there we'd find, I was certain, a helicopter pad, and the radio headquarters.

"The radio told Kenny, 'some curses never die,'" Karen recalled. "And I mean, let's think about it. Other people had been to R'lyeh before. An ancestor of Clyde's had, even." Bebe nodded tensely. "People've passed through Hell before, I mean, that much is obvious. And according to this book, some people can pass through and get to Purgatory, and then Heaven."

"Says the Mormon who's a shoo-in," Henrietta muttered.

Karen flushed. "I'm not, really, I just really like the Mormons, okay? They're awesome people. But I mean, sure, some people are more pious than others and all, and there's just certain places in Hell for certain people.

"I dunno, I was never all _that_ scared of it before, but now that they're coming up here, and these ancient trials are coming back…" Karen hesitated, and passed her glance around at all of us. "I feel like whatever curse it is Damien was talking about, it goes back pretty deep. I mean, Cthulhu was older than time, but so's Hell. Final resting place and all. And just—they're coming after us. We can't ignore that. They are coming—after—_us."_

"You?" I was the first to ask in a whisper. The others showed that they, too, were thinking along the same lines. I'd just been the bravest to voice it.

Karen slowly, stiffly, nodded. Then shrugged.

"And Eric," Wendy added quietly.

"And Kenny," said Karen.

"And Clyde, for some reason," Bebe whispered. "I'm not going to ignore that blood on his mask, and I don't think he is either."

"And somehow, Red and Kyle are hauled into it, too…" Wendy sighed.

"Kyle I get," Karen admitted. "Red's just bait."

She opened her mouth to say more, then shut it just as quickly. Hanging her head, the League's Angel seemed to be at a loss, projecting something akin to defeat. Moving tiredly, she brushed up against the counter and leaned back. She glanced at the notepad, and Henrietta's calligraphy detailing the few things we'd discussed so far, then let out her breath.

"It's really a nightmare," she said quietly.

"I'm getting really anxious to hear from the guys," Bebe said, glancing at her phone. "How long does it take to run those tests? I figured at least Ike might've gotten back to us by now."

"Yeah," Karen muttered. "Mr. Technology can't put down that tablet for a second, but he's not even gonna text me or anything…"

Henrietta got a sour look on her face, and started copying down a passage from _The Inferno. _"Come on," the Goth said, "let's work this crap out. Each painting has something red. Go look at them and tell me what they are. I'll see if I can match anything."

We did as she asked without arguing. Karen and I scoured paintings together, while Wendy and Bebe took the chance to talk as the second group. We made note of the shattered red mirror—_Wrath._ The red dice—_Fraud._ The red haze—_Limbo._ Red sash on the urns in _Lust,_ red blood on the _Greed_ mask, red _Treachery_ nooses, red _Violence_ circle, red _Gluttony_ carousel pole.

The last one we came upon was _Heresy._ The angelic woman descending into shadows. Karen shivered, and backed up against me. I didn't take much of a liking to that one, either… that or the blank _Pride_ canvas.

"Who is she?" Karen wondered in a hushed tone.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "You think she's someone specific?"

"I'm afraid so."

She didn't want to elaborate, and I didn't blame her. I wrapped an arm around her thin shoulders, and she relaxed a little, gratefully, saying, "Thank you, Marjorine. You seem really nice. Sorry we haven't hung out much."

"Aww, well, that's all right, Karen," I said. "You seem real sweet, too." I passed a glance over my shoulder, to see Wendy and Bebe approaching. Henrietta trailed, and hung in the doorway, scowling at the mess that still lay all around us.

Karen perked up after a second, and left for the center of the room, speaking into her wire. "I'm here," she said to the other party. "What're you guys finding? …Okay… well, good luck, stay at it. Um, by the way? …I, um, I just want to talk to you. Like—no, not business. Please. …I _know_ that's not protocol for wire but while I'm thinking about it. Please, I just wanted to get that out there. …Thank you. Really, I mean it, thank you. …Yeah, just us. Oh, hey, before you go, I—

"Dammit," Karen muttered, meaning that she must have been hung up on.

"Ike?" Wendy guessed.

"…Everything okay with you guys?" Bebe ventured to ask. I caught Henrietta showing _just_ how unimpressed she looked, off in the doorframe.

"I don't know… Ike is such a glutton for punishment!" Karen lamented, grabbing at her hair. She stormed to the center of the room, where she took a couple deep breaths, and stared at the debris from the She-Wolf's attack, scattered around at her feet. The shadows from the piles of dust I'd swept up seemed to creep around the floorboards, but the better part of me knew they would not move.

While a part of me feared that Disarray could appear again at any second, I knew that he wouldn't. He, Tenorman, and Damien had done their damage for the evening. We were left in their rubble, each of us breaking a little.

We were, much as I hated to admit it. Karen's issue was just the problem with many of us: this was too personal. Hell is too personal. Dealing with a heightened form of already-existing insecurities was painful, and not something that just anyone could come along and fix. I was dealing with a buried part of my past; Kenny was dealing with the disappearance of the person he loved; Clyde was stuck with a warning, and no clues as to what it could mean, where it could lead; Karen was trying to keep peace, while at the same time fearing that her relationship was on the rocks. Henrietta's shop was in a state of disrepair.

While Hell built up, they were trying to take us apart. Little by little, without us noticing. And even that was just, at present, speculation.

Not wanting to see anyone hurting, Wendy put one of her best features to use, and went to Karen to console her and offer her guidance. "Hey," she said, "I know, it sucks. Sometimes being with somebody can suck. But if you can get past it, it'll be great, you know it will. Do you love Ike?"

Karen wiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands. "See, I don't know," she said. "I feel like he hasn't given me any time to even think about that. And I feel like… like we should've by now! Our brothers get it, ugh! Kyle and Kenny both have these… th-these awesome people they just—just love, and who get them, and—I just, what if Ike just doesn't _want that?_ I'm sorry, I just haven't fucking been able to talk about it to anyone and me and Red were going to sit down and talk about it, and now we can't, and I'm afraid for Kenny, too and—Wendy, when do _I_ get to be afraid? _Can_ I be?"

"Karen, of course you can…" Wendy tried.

"But if Kenny's hurting, I want to help him," Karen insisted. "I just feel like I'm already in emotional overdrive because Ike just… I don't know!"

Wendy rubbed Karen's back, and said kindly, "I think you just need to take some deep breaths, honey… maybe get some sleep, and…"

"Sucks when even sleep is something to be afraid of lately, though," Karen admitted. "I'm afraid Kenny might not want to. I don't know if I want him to. What _happens?_ Henrietta, can the Dreamlands take you when you're asleep?"

Henrietta pulled out her quellazaire and a cigarette, fitting one to the other. "I normally don't talk to people who cry like this, but I don't even have an answer," she said. "I was figuring that artist will, once we get him conscious again."

"So… what?" I argued. "We all just gonna let fear win this one before we even try?" The others gave me their full attention, so I pressed on, "Look, I came up against something I wasn't expecting tonight. We're getting closer to this Carnival. I don't think they're actually going to kill or take anyone else until we make it to that place. They're gonna try, and they're gonna make us pretty angry along the way, but the worst we can do is assume and ignore.

"I think we're all tired. And I think we all _should_ sleep," I added. "If we don't, they win. You've gotta fight nightmares, and the best way to do that is by convincing yourself that whatever's wrong, you'll still wake up.

"Trust me," I went on, smiling at Karen. "If something hurts, you can make it better. You can always, always wake up from a nightmare. They're painted all around us right now, but they're just images. Hell might be a real, physical place, and so might that Carnival, but you can always fight and win against whatever's got your head or your heart hurting. Okay?"

Karen allowed herself to pause, then took a deep breath, hugged Wendy, then scampered over to hug me. She thanked us, each of us, even Henrietta, and stepped back to say, "Let's table nightmares for a bit, can we? I'm really hungry."

"We have some stuff," said Henrietta, lighting up, "but I'm not gonna go get it."

The night was throwing us through twists and turns, but the group of us opted to take it easy for a little while. We'd sleep on things, clear our heads. Besides—Wendy, Bebe and I had to admit—sometimes nothing could get us back on the right track like a little girl time.

We swept up a bit more, then laid out a huge black tablecloth on the floor. Henrietta brewed some herbal tea for all of us, and Wendy and I dug out some hors d'oeuvres that had been meant for the gallery opening reception. "Guess the Golems aren't really missing out," Bebe commented. "I wonder if they eat."

"That Hellhound wolf-thing sure wanted to eat _us,"_ Karen recalled.

I wanted to say, _Oh, hey, speaking of getting eaten, General Disarray is working for Hell now,_ but I held my tongue. That would have just gotten us all worked up again, and I was kind of wanting to take it upon myself to make sure the girls got some rest that night. Hopefully the guys could, too.

"So she was disguised as a person," said Bebe, blowing on the surface of her tea. "Do you think the Lion and Leopard are gonna do the same?"

"That's actually a good guess," said Henrietta. In a turn of events, she was now the one straightening up, while the three of us on the table cloth stared at the open _Inferno_ page bearing the drawing from earlier. "Lioness is Lust and the Lion is Pride. They could try to sneak in with the rest of these conformists somehow."

We let her predictable comment slide, and Wendy turned to Karen, who was ignoring the book. "Everything okay, Karen?" she wondered. "Is Ike really getting to you?"

Karen shook her head. "He's not getting to me, really," she said. "It just hurts to know he might." She went for a little brioche from the hors d'oeuvres plate, and munched on it quietly as she continued, "All I really need to do is just talk to him I think. How about you?"

"Hmm?" Wendy half-voiced, sipping her tea.

"You and Token. Or, uh, or Cartman. You guys went out once, right?"

Wendy sputtered into her tea and coughed as she set it down. "Eric Cartman does who and what he wants, when he wants," she said. "I don't know if I could ever date him again. And as for Token, um…"

"Hey, _hey._ I said no gushy stuff," Henrietta snapped.

"Oh, come on," I said. "No harm in talkin' out some of this stuff. Sometimes it's better to get personal things out of the way like this."

"Ugh, I don't get that candy-coated crap at all." Henrietta folded her arms, passing judgment on all of us.

Bebe looked at Wendy, then at me, then over at Henrietta. "You can talk, too, you know," she offered. "It's not all candy-coated. We can talk nitty-gritty. Don't tell me you don't like hearing stuff like this even a little. Plus, do you have stories?"

"No."

"From high school?"

_"No,"_ Henrietta stressed.

"So what happened?"

Henrietta paused, staring at a busted chair leg for a moment before she delicately lifted it to toss in with the rubbish. "You know," Bebe continued. "Between you and Craig."

The Goth shirked back. It was clear that she had not been asked something along those lines before, and she took the foreign question awkwardly. To my surprise, though, she answered. "He's a guy."

"Oh," said Bebe, carefully. "You're into—"

"No," Henrietta said quickly, "I mean, he's a _guy._ He wanted what apparently all guys want." She lit up the cigarette at the end of her quellazaire, inhaled, closed her eyes to exhale slowly, then finished up by saying, "And I didn't. There. Simple."

Well, at least it was an honest answer. I mean, I'd broken up with my ex-girlfriend over commitment preferences. Maybe I wasn't expecting an answer so normal from Henrietta. After all, I didn't know what at all she thought about relationships. She generally just didn't talk about them.

"Maybe he should fight the Leopard, then," Karen suggested with a slight shrug. "Get over his lust."

"Hmf," Henrietta snorted, walking back over to us to sit for a little tea.

"…You wanna talk about it?" I ventured, passing the Goth a rounded cookie.

Henrietta took it, and snapped it in half. "How are you guys always so positive about shit?" she wondered. "You guys out of everyone. The world sucks, and it's coming after you."

"And what're we supposed to do, let it?" Wendy argued. "We have things we really care about, Henrietta. Ideas, and places, and people. We do good for the town in the League, but we have to look out for each other, too." Smiling, she added, "That means you, too, whether you and your friends like it or not. You help out a lot."

"You make good drinks, too," I added.

Henrietta looked ready to say something to the effect of _thank you,_ but held back, taking another drag from her cigarette instead. She took another cookie off of the plate, set it in front of her, and doused her cigarette into the center. "Let me give you ladies a tip to help you out, then," she said. "Each of these paintings is, according to this book, one of the Circles of Hell.

"There are nine of them."

"But there're ten paintings," I pointed out.

"And the name of this shop?" Henrietta said straightforwardly.

The Tenth Circle.

The Carnival was their version of that. The bridge Between.

– – –

When Henrietta's companions did not allow us to stay the night, and it seemed like the guys weren't coming back any time soon, the rest of us ended up at Wendy's. She set up the pull-out sofa for Timmy, and set up an inflatable mattress on her floor for Bebe, while Karen borrowed pajamas and rolled out a sleeping bag on the floor in my room. After taking turns in the shower, Karen was the first one to fall asleep.

She kept her phone right next to her, though, and slept with her wire on. Next to her sleeping bag, she had carefully laid out, on a white facecloth so I would not step on it, her Guardian Angel barrette.

I wished I knew Karen a little better, I realized, when I returned from my own shower. Dried and decent, I slipped my hair into pigtail braids for the night, and selected a blue lace camisole to wear with a pair of pajama capris. Even trying to soothe myself to sleep, though, insisting upon my role as Harmony, insisting that it was Marjorine's turn to be the hero…

I couldn't sleep.

After encouraging everyone else to get some rest, I myself could not sleep. Worse, I felt trapped. Yes, I felt more balanced in my life, yes, I wanted to give myself some time as Marjorine to heal and straighten out my thoughts and convince myself of my own words: that I could beat an old nightmare.

But part of me just wasn't feeling too great.

I'd already had plenty of nightmares.

I liked being awake.

Being awake meant balance. Meant being Harmony.

I knew corruption. I'd lived it. I'd built traps and fallen into them. I'd been the Chaos that Disarray ripped apart.

Once upon a time, Chaos had been mine. I'd let him go, and let him falter, and become the nightmares that had lived in my dreams when I was a kid.

No, I liked being awake. I liked being awake.

I hadn't had a nightmare in four years, but I was watching them play out in real life around me now. The others, I realized, did not know what it meant to live under such circumstances. What it felt like to have tar for blood, what it felt like to rage like fire when the soul felt consumed with bitter loneliness, helplessness, avarice and violence. What it felt like to want the world to suffer, because one person was hurting inside.

I glanced over at my Harmony gear. I was one of the medics, now. I fixed things. Mended things.

Sometimes when a wound needs mending, it leaves a scar. Sometimes things can't be fixed.

I just hoped that I could stitch whatever this problem was back together before the fabric of the League could start to rip apart for good.

I didn't want things to fall apart. They couldn't.

The last thing I saw before I fell asleep was the coin Dougie had tossed me, scratched number facing up, which I'd let sit on my chest of drawers. Kenny and Ike had tickets; I had a coin. Slowly, I realized, we were being admitted to that terrible Carnival.

That night, I had a dream.

It was about an angel, whose face I could not see, walking along a crack in a barren landscape. Dead trees splintered out of the ground at chaotic points. Nothing happened, really. She just kept on walking.

As the dream continued, the trees began to show red strings. It seemed that, at one point, the strings had all been tied together, but now they were frayed, leaving only one scrap hanging from a branch on each respective crumbling tree.

I could not see the features of the angel still, but I knew that she was sad. Because she could not mend the strings.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

We're back! Sorry for the delay on this one. Things are gonna still be a little scattered as far as updates go, unfortunately… life keeps throwing crazy curve balls into our schedules, but we're going to keep going with this story, updates just may be slow. If we need to postpone at all, we always make note in my profile~ :3

And this is the chapter in which things start getting, well… more disjointed. XD Hopefully Kenny's nightmare narrative reads well (as well as a waking nightmare can read, I suppose, heh…); we're going to be playing a bit more with altered narrations and realities in chapters to come…

This week, we wanted to check in a bit with the girls, and coming up is a bit more on what exactly is going on with Cartman. I've been really looking forward to digging into his story more, though of course we'll hear from Kenny (and Wilcox…), and definitely Stan, who'll be narrating next, at the lab…

It's our hope to get up a new chapter by **Wednesday,**__**October 10****th****; **if postponed, we should hopefully be back in business by that following Sunday. We'll keep you posted! Thank you so, so much for reading! See you around soon~ :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	12. Ep 12: At the Mines of Madness

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Stan_

I had yet to encounter a lock I could not break.

Luckily, such was the case at the South Park geology lab, at which my father was employed. The locks gave easily on the front door of that rather nondescript building, but I passed over entering Dad's alarm code in order to let Ike override the system. I really didn't have the time to be answering Dad and his co-worker's questions on why I'd have been going in at, oh, nearly midnight after being at what I'd described as just a 'party.'

Some party that art opening had turned out to be. We'd gleaned a fair amount of information from it, sure, but even after our respective fights, we had suffered a couple of losses. There was nowhere to go, however, but forward.

The geology lab consisted of six research offices, two primary laboratories, and several work rooms and filing spaces. I grabbed a box of work gloves from a utility closet, and handed them out to the guys as I led the group back toward the primary lab; Kyle carried the iron sample in a dish cloth we'd 'borrowed' from the Goths, while Ike ran a periphery scan of the area, making sure we had not been followed.

"Even if we were being followed," Clyde pointed out, as he and Token kept an eye on Kenny, who walked between them, "I doubt those guys need anything we'd find here."

"Right," Kenny muttered. "Because they already have it."

We weren't in a position, currently, for me to go directly to Kenny in order to start up more of a conversation on what exactly he'd just been through, but I made a note to myself to touch base with him. He'd come back with Clyde and Bebe shaken, and utterly not himself. While he was snapping out of it, I was worried. More disconcerting were the glances he kept on giving Kyle. I knew why, I just didn't think it was very… well, _Kenny_ of Kenny to be doing so.

It was a _why not you?_ look. Which didn't exactly settle well with me. Kyle had escaped 'recruitment' that night, and we were lucky for that. But at the same time, I knew what kind of trauma Kenny was facing… after all, Red and Karen were the most immediate 'family' he still had. I just hoped he could shake himself cognizant enough to keep on thinking of me and Kyle that way as well. That he could talk to us, not just feel some kind of foundationless anger. Yes, Red and Kyle were both targets, but Red was more valuable to Kenny—therefore, she was more valuable to Damien, as well.

While I was convinced that they would not harm her, I knew that Kenny would be feeling otherwise. They'd hit upon a weak point, and with him vulnerable, Damien or Tenorman could strike a real blow, and it looks like they'd already tried: Kenny was listing, unstable. None of us could stand to see him like that.

Being at the lab seemed to be doing him some good, though, which was momentarily relieving. Before I could make the move to talk to him, however, Cartman made his way to the front of the group and nudged my arm.

"What's up?" I wondered. "You get those gloves?"

"Yeah, yeah," he said, yanking a pair on. "You really think we're gonna find these guys here?"

"We're gonna get close," I assured him. When Cartman went quiet and somber, I knew something was up, so I prompted, "You okay?"

"Oh, I'm great, Stan, I'm great, I'm awesome. No, I'm not fucking okay," he complained, raising his eyes at me. "Dude. My mom's been hiding shit from me my whole fuckin' life, and now the one guy who's been the big problem from the start didn't even _come after me._ I hate that asshole, I gotta deal with him myself."

"Cartman, _you_ started it," Kyle reminded him harshly. "You had his parents killed."

"And ground up into chili I fed to him. I know. Semantics."

Kyle groaned. "You're just using that word because it sounds interesting."

"Possibly," Cartman admitted with a shrug. "But, dude, why didn't he just come after me tonight, huh?"

"It's not all about you," Kenny said tersely. I turned to find he was glaring daggers forward. Not at any of us in particular. Past us, probably. Right at Damien. "I'll admit that a lot of it is, but the sooner we can get closer to Damien to extract some real answers out of these guys, the sooner you'll have an answer to that."

Cartman swerved back, away from me, Kyle and Ike, and I heard him say to Kenny as he fell toward the rear of the group, "I've got nightmares too, you know."

The rest of the walk back to the lab happened in silence. Which was rather welcome, since it let me have a moment with my thoughts for the first time that evening.

Through all these twists and turns, everything had to connect, somehow. It was obvious that there were greater powers out there than anything officially known about on Earth, but I found myself questioning existence itself. Where was the break? I had been having nightmares for a while, sure, but what if those weren't just nightly images that came to mind after the stress from the Cthulhu crisis, but actual cracks in reality?

I wouldn't be surprised if I or Kenny… or, honestly, any of us would be susceptible to viewing things that anyone else could pass off as simple dreams. If Cartman had admitted to having nightmares, as well—God, I could only imagine what could be going on in his head at night. The question was, though, whether or not Damien had been keeping a watchful eye on us during and in the years since the crisis. Whether he'd been waiting to slip in between the Spaces in order to strike now, and if he had any idea of what the group of us had been dreaming about for the past four years.

Attacking us all on a personal level… I agreed with the idea that Hell had to have some kind of file system. That they were keeping tabs on us. All we could hope for was to be able to catch up, figure out where the GSM was now operating from, and shut them down before things could get out of hand. It did still worry me that the personal attacks could be distractions to ease us off the path of a larger strike, something we had yet to know about.

Kenny was blinking a lot, I noticed, when I opened up the door to the nearest lab. He was jostling himself; good. Good. Hopefully, we could all contribute to whatever we were about to find. I flicked on the lights, illuminating the enormous room with its three work desks, large topographical map situated on a table at the center, and its numerous computers and scanners. A large glass encasement was set up at the far end, containing mineral samples from various areas in our immediate region.

South Park, and the surrounding Park County, was once home to several mines during the gold rush. The mines were, and some still are, abundant in an array of minerals, and it was not uncommon to sift out a little fools' gold here and there. Prospectors did mine up iron and such, but the mines closed down when the gold rush went the way of history. Some mines in other towns remain open as attractions, but the deposits in the mountains around which our town was situated had not been traversed or excavated in years.

Perfect for a hiding place, if those involved knew how to dig. Some of the Golems earlier that evening had been wielding pickaxes, so it was no stretch of the imagination to figure out just how important those old mines were to at least some part of the impending Carnival.

Token, Clyde and Craig headed straight for the topographical map, getting a feel for how the region would be mapped out, while the rest of us remained near one of the research desks by the door. "Nightmares, huh?" Kenny finally answered Cartman, his eyes unsure of where they wanted to focus.

"Been getting really bad sleep," Cartman confirmed, "and it's not just cuz Wendy's house is too fuckin' clean."

"You sure it's not indigestion?" Ike chided, scrolling through his tablet to make sure the security system didn't accidentally re-alarm itself.

"Ike. Seriously."

Ike just shrugged.

"Let's get this stuff out of the way first," I suggested. "I've got a feeling we can talk dreams a little later. Maybe after getting some actual sleep."

"Hmm," was all Kenny offered.

"Kenny?" I asked to check in. "How're you holding up?"

He hesitated before giving an answer, and looked down at his feet, as if to confirm that he was standing on his own. Or, perhaps, to consult with his shadow. It had not moved. Kenny held out a hand to watch the shadow of it cast itself accordingly; still, did not move of its own volition. I'd watched that shadow from the envelope swallow him up, though… could Damien's version of that curse just come and go?

Kenny let out his breath, shook his head, and pushed against his forehead with both palms as he stretched his back a bit, then finally answered. "For lack of a better word, I'm awake." His voice came out a little steadier than before, which was promising.

I patted his shoulder a couple times. "Don't worry, dude," I said. "We'll figure out where these guys are and what's going on. Tonight. I promise."

Kenny nodded, then ticked his head in the direction of the research desk bearing my dad's name. I took the hint, and got to work.

Securing my gloves in place, I booted up the computer at the surprisingly clean workspace. Dad and a couple of others had research desks in the lab, in addition to their own spaces in one of the offices (right, _that_ was the cluttered desk, I remembered), and I was lucky to have done at least a little work on this computer to know what software I was looking for. Kyle stood behind me, hands on my shoulders, and watched as I clicked through a data analysis program.

Kyle's pulse rises when he's onto something. I felt it through his hands the second I started up a new project in the software. "Am I doing the right thing?" I wondered when I'd caught on.

"Hey, you know this software more than I do," he said. "I'm just thinking."

I laughed. "I gathered. What about?"

"How they could've infiltrated without the lab already noticing." Kyle had lowered his voice as if telling a secret, but I knew it was more out of a bit of fear than anything. He was right, of course: any shift in regional geographic activity, and Dad or one of his partners or especially higher-ups in Park County usually noticed. Then again, we were dealing with Hell and Spaces Between our world, dreams and the afterlife that nobody was supposed to cross…

"Hold up, you're right," I realized. "Sample."

"Here." Kyle had set down the dishcloth full of ore when he'd joined me at the desk, and now folded back the fabric to reveal the Golem dust.

Cartman crossed over to the desk, and leaned over the work space to get closer to the action and information. "I still don't get how you're gonna track these fuckers with _dirt."_

"Dirt's a lot more important than you might think, man," I said.

Next to the computer was a weigh station and scanner, onto which I moved a handful of the iron dust. The analysis program on the computer fired up, and a window opened to inform me that a scan was ten percent complete.

"See, what I'm thinking," I said, as the percentage rose to twenty, "is, you've got all these raw materials, and yet no seismic activity has been noted. No change in anything, and obviously no authorization of re-opening any of the mines in or around our region. Meaning none of the ore is registering as _missing,_ necessarily."

"What?" Cartman wondered, leaning over the desk to get a look at the program.

Kyle squeezed my shoulders and leaned in himself. The percentage rose to thirty, then fifty. "Basically," he guessed, "if I'm on the same waves you are, here, anything they're using isn't registering as missing because it's still there."

"Except it's up and moving, right?" Craig guessed, from where he leaned against another research desk a few feet away. "The rock men Golem things."

"Oh, they're probably accounting for some of it, but any _huge_ percentage of this stuff Damien and Tenorman and them are taking is going right back into the earth," I deduced, "because they're using the same exact materials to construct the Carnival."

Ninety percent.

"I gotta get one of those systems," Ike laughed. "This place is the best."

Ike was more or less right… we'd do well, in the League, to be as fully equipped as this lab. The large room had a higher ceiling and much more tech than our constantly updating base of operations. Yes, we probably could use a better scanner system than just the several (questionably legal) programs running on Ike's iPad and Timmy's computer, so while we were hacked into the geology lab, I wanted to make the most of it. Ike, did, too, apparently: he was scanning and coding nearly everything in the room, in hopes of somehow replicating the system back at the base. That kid's brain never stopped working. I hoped for Karen's sake, though, the guy could take a breather sometime soon.

We could all use a little room to breathe.

_Scan Complete_ appeared on the screen, prompting me to run a back-up scan to track the ore itself, cross-referencing the type with others sampled from the surrounding area that were in the lab's database. It showed up as the exact compound we'd predicted: iron sulfide. Tenorman's Ginger army consisted of Golem footsoldiers made of fools' gold.

"Yep," I confirmed when the substance analysis was complete, "iron, all right. And sulfur. Which just figures."

"You get an origin on it, too?" Token asked.

"Hold on…" I watched as the program whirred with the additional scan, giving off nothing but red light for a moment—then, a green box popped up. The ore's origin was given in topographical coordinates on the screen. Right where I should have figured the largest deposits of any sulfuric compound would be. "Yes!" I exclaimed. "Yes, got it!"

"Well? Where's it from?" Kenny wanted to know.

I borrowed a laser pointer from the top drawer and left my seat for the large topographical map on the center table, where I slapped my hand once down on an area marked on the map in yellow. "Recent activity here, but this was, what, twelve, thirteen years ago? About time to start watching it again."

"Stan, what is that?" Clyde wondered, leaning over the table.

"Elevation of two hundred feet, large deposits of sedimentary rock, iron, and sulfur, high combustibility, situated near old mines and over tectonic plates?" I saw Kyle grin at me, and mouth the word, _Clever._ I grinned back, passed the laser pointer into my right hand, and shone the little red dot at the marked area on the map as I announced, "Guys, the Carnival is somewhere near, if not in, the South Park volcano."

Everyone in the room erupted into various verbal reactions to the discovery, with the exception of Craig, who was never very vocal; he simply ticked his head back to look at the ceiling, his face reading, _of course,_ then set his gaze on the topographical map before joining the rest of us around it. Kenny scowled down at the map and said, "Dammit. This thing has probably been an active passageway to Hell for years, and we've just never made anything of it."

"Well, I mean, why would we?" Kyle pointed out, before Kenny could get too invested in hindsight. "It's not like this ever made itself as obvious as some other things we've seen in this town."

"The volcano…" Clyde mused. "No wonder they can just keep on manufacturing Golems. It's like they've got a direct route back down to Hell through that thing."

"Not to mention an endless supply of materials," Token added.

"With the mines nearby and the heat from the volcano for solder," I said, "shit, they could be building just about anything."

"Yeah," Kyle agreed, "and they are." He leaned back, tried to fold his arms out of habit, winced from the burns, and settled on sliding his hands into his back pockets instead. I cringed a bit as well—I felt slightly responsible for the damage done to his arms, and even though the burns would heal, we had no knowing of how, for the time being, he'd be affected by the injury. "They're building that whole Carnival. Kenny, what's it say on that note you got?"

Kenny withdrew the small note, though he hardly had to look it over. "Attraction Nine," he read off.

"Then we have a jumping off point," Kyle concluded. "There are at least nine of these 'attractions' at the Carnival, and Kenny and Ike already have tickets. I know they're after me for another one, but apparently, tonight was their last recruitment effort. I'm not saying I'm in the clear, or that anyone is, but I think tonight marks them reaching their limit of how much they can take from our mines and volcano without this lab noticing."

"So they go right ahead and open up shop," Clyde said briskly, snapping his fingers.

"We've got our opening," said Kenny. He held his hand out to me, and it took me only a second to figure out what he wanted. I passed the laser pointer into his palm. He rolled it between his fingers for a moment, as he reviewed aloud, "Our opening, the Carnival, the passage to Hell and the Dreamlands…" He stopped playing with the pointer, and shone the little red dot on the proper spot on the map. His eyes sank, and he held his breath before he finished, "…And Red."

Nobody else spoke or moved. I passed a look around the table, and we seemed to be in agreement… hoping that Kenny could stay 'awake' for a while longer. He gave himself a moment, then switched off the laser pointer, and tossed it back over to me.

"Thanks," I said. "We have an idea of a plan, guys?"

"Sure do. Ike?" Kenny prompted.

"Getting a topographical scan now," Ike said, pre-empting the rest of the request. "I'll set up a map back at the base so we can plot a route."

"Good work," said Clyde. "Token, man, you got the spare phone on you?"

"Always do." Token reached into his pocket for the unlisted, by-the-minute cell phone he had for League purposes only, and pressed a speed dial button before he could even ask, "Want me going straight to Murphy with this?"

"Murphy should know," Kenny nodded. "I don't trust Yates right now."

"Fair enough." Token spun back toward a quieter hallway, to start up his conversation with the cop in private.

"I saw him tonight," Craig mentioned, leaning over the map table to prop his head up with one hand, elbow on the edge of the table. "Murphy, not Yates. The force is kinda split in half right now."

"Fucking Sargeant's taking the bait, isn't he?" Kenny guessed. "Damien's got some kinda hold on his wife, so not till long till we lose half the force, I guess."

"I doubt he's someone they'll want to copy into Golems," Kyle said, "but still, if they get him in any way, that's still one of the higher authorities of Park County. We can't just ignore the fact that he might slip."

The consensus had already more or less been that this was a League mission only. Force backup was a last call, but there was rarely a question that the town felt safer when they saw plenty of cops around. We couldn't go stationing Murphy or anyone yet, though: no actual threat had yet been announced.

Posters were still sighted around town advertising the Carnival, and for all any of us knew, dozens more would have gone up throughout town all night, while we were fighting back the various threats that had risen up during the art opening event.

When Token returned from having made the call, we each did a sweep of the room to make sure nothing was out of place, and that no dust from the ore had spilled out onto the floor, desk, or scanner. In one of the large file cabinets in the room, I knew that there were multiple (luckily un-counted) copies of area maps, so I borrowed a few and gave them to Clyde to add to the cork board back at the base, aiding in Ike's project.

"Well, guys, we've got a few answers," I said, hoping to bring a little sense of triumph to the evening. "We can get going on breaking down that barrier and shoving these guys back to Hell."

"Right, we get where they are here," Cartman pointed out, "but what about this dream crap? We can't track those."

"Yes, we can." Kenny was still staring at the map when he spoke, but slowly straightened, and pushed back, away from the table. He walked around to where we were standing, and said, "We know a man who does it all the time. Let's go wake him up."

– – –

When we returned from the lab, the girls had long since gone home, which I'd _hoped_ would get Kenny to relax a little, and admit that he needed sleep himself. But, no. I guess I had to hand it to him for his determination, but talking about nightmares and sleeplessness seemed to be something more easily talked about when fully alert.

Kyle and I stayed with him, though. Neither of us could argue that I was probably in need of the same talk Kenny was. In that vein, Cartman stuck around as well. The four of us needed answers.

We had to talk to Wilcox.

The others left with Token to check in on Timmy, Butters and the girls, while the four of us remained at the Goths' flat. Just about the only things stopping Kenny from storming in to wake Wilcox right off were the Goths, all three of whom scrutinized our arrival as they sat around several books and black candles in the front room.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," the shorter of the men huffed out.

"Sure, come _right in,"_ the taller added with arsenic sarcasm.

"We need to talk," Kenny insisted.

"Ugh, we have been," the sole woman of the group complained.

"To Wilcox," I corrected.

"Fuckin da Vinci's still asleep," said the tallest of the three.

"That doesn't really matter right now," Kenny said, trying to keep himself focused. "Look, that man knows things. About the Spaces Between, about the routes to get there, about how to deal with the bridge between nightmares and reality. If Hell's trying to connect them, then we need to beat them to it. I want to know about those paintings, and I want to know if they can help me find my _fucking girlfriend."_

"Perhaps."

The voice came from the hall connecting the large front area of the flat to the mysterious bedrooms in the back, and belonged to none other than the artist himself. Wilcox was leaning against the newspapered wall, staring straight at Kenny, his pale skin and prematurely white hair washing him out to appear as a ghost in the already crypt-like apartment. My triumph from discovering the trail to the volcano faded back into a notion of fear upon seeing him.

We were here to consult with him on the subject of dreams and nightmares, to uncover a bit of reality behind the paintings hanging on the walls downstairs and hopefully shed light on the metaphysical part of our mission against Hell.

It started when, after the Goths' initial mutters over Wilcox having woken up, Kenny stormed over to the man and said, "Glad you're awake. We have got a lot to talk about."

"I'm sorry, but, who are you?" Wilcox wondered.

"And, okay, we're starting with that. Henrietta, can we use your room?"

Henrietta was given a couple of awful looks from her two flatmates. She appeared hesitant, but chose us over them with no further convincing. "Fine," she said, sounding scornful. "You get an hour. Then you are all out of here for the night, got it? All of you."

The other Goths responded as positively as I'd ever seen them to Henrietta's snarky brand of pest control, and as the woman shrouded in black walked over to lead us back toward her bedroom, I noticed her red-haired friend rise to grab a bottle of red wine from the windowsill. "If Hell's coming after us," he said as the rest of us began to follow Henrietta, "I'm at least gonna get drunk for it."

"Yeah," said the other. "Maybe it'll just seem like another crappy Tim Burton movie that way."

The lights in Henrietta's room were quite purposefully dim: the overhead light remained off, and floor lamps situated at two corners cast a chilling paleness over the floor. I felt myself shiver. There seemed to be no more perfect spot to have this strange dream counseling session (as the impending discussion seemed to be, at least) than her bedroom. Henrietta sat down on the edge of her large bed nearest the cabinet I knew was stocked full of her collected remnants of artifacts from and about R'lyeh and other lost cities and cults, while she allowed Wilcox a seat at the foot. Kyle and I took a seat on a large black trunk underneath a window, while Cartman took the seat at Henrietta's desk, and Kenny had to be coerced into sitting on an ottoman that Henrietta made him pull out from under the bed.

"I hardly enjoy discussing my own dreams," Wilcox admitted, leaning over his knees. He perched his feet on the bed frame, and seemed very small upon doing so. His body and mind were both very fragile, I realized. If we were going to make any more headway tonight, we had to tread carefully, and listen to everything. "I'm at a loss as to why so many people would be interested in such a conversation."

"How many people did you have to speak to tonight?" Kenny wondered.

Wilcox reached into his pocket, and drew out a long rosary, which he began to twist around in his hands as he continued to speak. "Too many. Though very few of them were what one would consider to be 'people.' I'm sorry, do I know you?"

"We've met," I said. "Sort of."

I looked to Kenny to be the one giving the full answer, and he hardly faltered before coming right out with, "You can probably guess, Mr. Wilcox. We're part of the Shadow League. Henrietta hadn't already told you?"

"I don't gossip," said the Goth, lighting up a cigarette. She was so clipped with her words, as if she had reason to be defensive on the subject.

"I'm not sure I ever learned her name, either," Wilcox mentioned. Henrietta hardly showed an inclination of a response. When he looked at us again, I got the strangest feeling that we had no idea what it was we were inviting onto ourselves by asking the artist such a weighted question as how he perceived the world of dreams.

As we had proven many times in the past, there were answers to just about every question out there. But even then, there will always be things that mankind should never know. That, however, is what has always set us apart. We're the Shadow League. Everything we've learned is shrouded. Secret.

I got the feeling that one could say that the few of us were, effectively, our own sort of Space Between: we existed and operated between mortal perception and otherworldly phenomena.

So I really should not have been shocked to discover exactly how true that statement was. My own thoughts were, however, that, yes… someday, it would be nice to try just living life. Be proud of the events that lay behind me and move on. Do the things one was, well, more or less expected to do after college. Work, live, love… settle down.

When you stare Hell in the face, though, it's really hard to consider that a possibility. It's even worse when your own nightmares are put into the perspective of your very life.

"I should have supposed that was who you were," Wilcox said, bringing me back to the conversation from my thoughts. "I'm sorry. My mind has been… otherwise occupied. Your names, then?"

He looked at me and Kyle first, so we gave him our full names, bypassing our alter egos, since that was an easy guess. It was Cartman who brought it up when Wilcox prompted him to speak. "Eric Cartman," he said. "The Coon. Oh, and, uh, the guy that made you paint those things is kinda my brother, cuz my mom's a… well, she slept around."

Henrietta raised her eyebrows, but her mouth was occupied around her quellazaire. Wilcox, however, began rattling the rosary around and around, rubbing his palms together as if to start a fire. "Damien Thorn…?" the artist asked weakly. "Damien Thorn is your brother…?"

Cartman shrugged numbly, and started picking at a dot of black paint on Henrietta's desk. He stopped when the Goth glared at him, but answered, "Yeah, I guess. My mom, uh, sleeps around."

"You don't say," Kyle whispered, so only I could hear. Liane's promiscuity had been the source of some issues in town before, but never quite to this extent. I did kind of feel bad for Cartman on the subject… I mean, it was out of his hands. You can't choose your relatives. You don't choose to be cursed at birth, you don't choose your biological parents. That's just how things are. I knew that even Kyle felt bad… the reality was that we were nervous.

We'd had a few scares in the past, when we'd wondered whether or not the Coon would stay on in the League. With the entire future of the League up in the air now, it would be the worst of times for anything to happen to divert him now. I doubted he would, though, if he'd been so quick to bring up the subject of nightmares himself.

"I would be extremely careful if I were you, then," the artist advised Cartman, who looked too distracted to respond.

"No shit. See, Scott Tenorman's my brother, too."

Once again, Wilcox rattled his rosary. I glanced over at Kenny, who was staring right at Wilcox's pale hands. As if that were enough, the rattling stopped, but the man's hands still shook.

"Scott Tenorman who's, like, working with Damien," Cartman clarified. "The fuck do I do? The fuck haven't they come right after me?"

"If I were one to assume," said Wilcox, "it may be that luring you slowly, if they need you, which it sounds like they do, is more effective than direct attack."

"Whatever they're doin', it's pissing me off," Cartman muttered.

"Actually, me, too," Kenny said, nearly slipping into his lower Mysterion tone to speak. "Listen. We've learned about the spheres. Circles, whatever. This Heaven-Earth-Hell thing, or even Earth-R'lyeh-Hell. You've got to know something about what's left over. The spaces between the circles, the pockets without rules."

Wilcox nodded. "The Dreamlands," he said somberly. "Yes. I've seen and painted worlds like those for years."

"Then do you have any idea how to access them?" Kenny wondered. He looked like he could fall asleep any second. He was exhausted, and it showed with every question he asked, every sentence he formed.

"Why would you want to?"

"Because Hell does, and they have!" Kenny snapped. "I've seen them, or heard them. I'm just getting over hearing someone speak to me who isn't here."

"Living?"

"Yes, and trapped. They've got her. My girlfriend, her name is Red. They took her tonight, and gave me a ticket telling me to come search for her. We have proof that Damien, Tenorman and their army are building a physical Carnival somewhere around the volcano—"

"Classy," Henrietta put in.

"They have a physical Carnival, but it's more than that, I know it," Kenny continued. "There's some kind of Dreamlands link. How can something be real and imagined at the same time? _Are_ these places just in your mind?"

"Goodness, no. They exist," Wilcox said. "It takes a certain sort to see them, that's all."

I felt like my heart leapt right out of my body. I really, really should not have been shocked… it must have been the Hell aspect of the whole thing. While very few had known of the existence of a place called R'lyeh, Hell was something very much embedded into all of us, as humans, from an early age. Hell was every place you never wanted to go, every awful thing you never wanted to think about. And it was real. Something that could only be imagined while alive.

It sounded like such a lonely, terrible place to me. I had this strange lingering perception of the Hell of the Middle Ages, full of flames and torture—I was sure it wasn't all like that now, but if Damien was trying to bring Hell back to the structure it had once had…

What could they possibly be setting up at that Carnival…?

"Please," Kenny said, using the word for quite possibly the first time that evening, if I had to make an educated guess, "tell us everything you can about them. About how to see them, or get there, or… well, how to get someone out."

Wilcox let out a hum. He was suddenly like a psychologist, seeing us all at once for group therapy. An unwilling one, at that. He was trembling and timid, but it was very apparent in his expression that he had seen Hell and did not want anyone, regardless of how well he knew them, to suffer the same experience.

"The Dreamlands manifest to those susceptible to find themselves there," said Wilcox. "Now, I know, that may sound rather roundabout or ridiculous, but it's true. If I'm going to tell you anything about my own experience with that sort of thing, I must know yours.

"Now, boys, tell me," Wilcox prompted us, sweat beading on his brow. "What was the most recent dream you had?"

"What, like, that we can remember?" asked Cartman.

"That would make sense, wouldn't it?" Kyle mocked him.

"It would be best if you could recall your most recent," Wilcox agreed. "Better still if you chronicle them. Or… possibly not."

"What makes you say that?" I wondered.

Wilcox shook his head. "I don't want to encourage any of you to cross the same line I did. That my father and uncles did, my relatives until many, many years back. We're all prone to fever dreams, fits, madness, awful things that will stay in our heads and eat us alive unless we let them out.

"So we have to paint. Sculpt. Something, anything, just to get these things outside of our minds. But when they leave, they become the sources of nightmares for others."

"But Damien _commissioned_ you to paint those nine things downstairs," Kenny pointed out.

"Ten," the artist corrected.

"One of them is blank."

"So was that dream."

"What about the red?" Henrietta asked, reaching over to a table beside her bed for a slip of paper. "The dice and mirrors and crap."

"That was a result of the way my hand interpreted things," said Wilcox. "It's true that this is a commissioned set. I saw Hell in those dreams. He approached me, would not let me refuse, gave me a drink, supplied me with paint, and told me to work until this deadline. I'm so sorry, boys."

"Damien was drinking something weird tonight, himself," Kenny recalled. "Mr. Wilcox, what kind of paint were you given? What was in it?"

"Oil, as far as I could tell at first. It had a strange smell to it, like sulfur, which drove me to finish many of these in charcoal. I never could see anything for the tenth…"

"Sulfur and charcoal," I repeated. Kyle caught his breath beside me. "Full circle."

"Indeed," said Henrietta, breathing out smoke.

Even the paintings were pieces of the volcano.

"…So…" Kyle began, unsteadily, "wait, if they're mixing that sulfur with oil paint, and using it to make Golems _and,_ as far as we know, the Carnival itself…"

"Dude, what if they control anything that shit's in?" Cartman realized. "You were right, Stan, dirt's serious."

"And, I mean, there's iron in the bloodstream," Kyle added. "I bet they're mixing that with the iron on site to make those things anyway."

"Meaning the Carnival might be more or less 'alive,' as well," Kenny mused. "Fuck. _Fuck,_ these guys are good…"

"I apologize if I aided them in any way," Wilcox said. "After being given that paint, all I could see were Hell's nine circles in my dreams. I had to get them out."

"I bet that's what the guy who wrote _The Inferno_ thought, too," Kenny said. "Damien said that was a commission from his father however long ago."

"I would not doubt that." After fiddling just a bit more with the rosary, Wilcox transitioned, "Please, boys, tell me about what you've been seeing. Dreams, nightmares, however you can categorize them. If you want to bridge through to the Dreamlands, I need to know if I can help."

After a moment of discerning who would be the first to expound upon his dreams, it was decided that I should come forward. I'd been having nightmares the longest, though I could hardly say what all of them were about. I explained to the painter that I'd once been shot down and was effectively dead for a full week, and that the nightmares had begun some time after the Cthulhu crisis had ended.

"Last time I had a _really_ vivid dream," I went on, racking my brain, "it was about—shit, this is gonna sound stupid… it was about some town I've never been to. Near the ocean. Or maybe a marsh. At least, I think it was. Not all of them are about that. Hell, not all of them even have images. It's more like a feeling than actually watching something when I sleep. When the dreams first started, I'd wake up cold."

"That's how you felt—" Kyle recalled, taking hold of my wrist and staring straight at me. I couldn't meet his eyes.

"That's how I felt right before we crossed into R'lyeh." I nodded solemnly, and Wilcox took in the information with concern and understanding. "Sometimes I wake up and my palms are sweating. It isn't so much what I dream about, it's how I wake up that's weird," I admitted.

"You wake up feeling as though you're still asleep." Wilcox did not state that as a question. I shivered. He lived that, every day. "Waking is a hard part of the process, Mr. Marsh."

"Stan," I requested, "please."

"Stan," the artist tried. "You have heritage in the Spaces Between. I can see it." Kyle and I winced together, and I felt another chill coming on, just before Kyle shifted to lace his fingers through mine, place his free hand on my arm, and squeeze as tightly as we could both currently stand. I drew in my breath.

"How do you know?" Kyle demanded. "Or… see?"

"Mere ancestry," Wilcox continued, skirting slightly around Kyle's question, "probably no more than a distant relation. But, a relation, all the same. Tell me, Stan, is there any history of—of groups, or gatherings in your family?"

"Cults?" Henrietta prompted more bluntly.

"No," I answered with a sharp tongue. "Dude, unless you count the Hare Club for Men, my dad and grandfather have no history in that kind of thing."

Wilcox was silent for hardly an instant, going over what I'd just said. "Hare Club for—ah, yes, yes, I've come across that, yes," he said, nodding as he spoke. "Interesting, if terrestrial. Now, your grandfather, Stan, is he living?"

It was tough to give the answer, so I simply shook my head.

"Does your father have any of his records?"

"What are you trying to find out about me?" I demanded. "I thought you wanted to know about my dreams."

"I do know about your dreams," said Wilcox. "You're a Marsh. Do you swim?"

"I'm a lifeguard."

Wilcox hummed, and tapped his fingertips together somberly. "No wonder you lived," he mused.

"I'm sorry," Kyle cut in angrily, "but what the fuck is this about and where do you get off? Is it so hard, is it _so hard_ to get a real answer out of you?"

"You're the Human Kite," Wilcox accurately observed.

"Kyle," he allowed quickly. "But—"

"You don't dream as vividly," said the artist. "When you wake up, your dreams are over. You live in this world, and that's enviable."

"I like things to be logical," said Kyle, "that's all. Which is why all this roundabout crap isn't getting us anywhere, because you aren't making any sense."

Wilcox regarded the statement, but let it fall to the side. He passed his hands through his shocked-pale hair, and licked a cut on his upper lip before he continued. "I've heard about you. You perceive more of what is logical than the average mind dares to."

"I'm psychic," Kyle said through grated teeth.

"And yet you don't dream beyond barriers…"

"Stop it!" Kyle barked. "Quit the riddle-talking, _please._ What's so significant about that, and what's wrong with the dreams my fucking boyfriend is having? And what about Kenny?"

"Kenny?"

Kenny raised his hand to remind Wilcox who he was, and the painter blanched. "Mysterion," he reminded him.

"Yes. That makes sense. We spoke downstairs." Wilcox's expression went grey, and he added, "You, too, have nightmares. You've crossed a barrier of consciousness. You feel like you've been sleepwalking, don't you?"

"I saw my girlfriend," Kenny stated again, sounding weaker each time he mentioned the phenomenon. "Where is she? Is it Hell? Is it just my mind?"

"Hell is your mind," said Wilcox.

"Then how do we fight it?" I asked in a whisper.

Wilcox sighed. "By taking Hell's trials," he advised us, "and hoping that Fate allows you to win.

"Hell has enlisted the Spaces Between, to access the dreams of the ones most vulnerable. You all dream vividly, but for you," Wilcox nodded to Kyle, "the tether, like the Circles themselves. You follow rules."

"Logic," Kyle corrected. "So… okay, can you break this down for me? The more of a formula this can be, the better I think I can understand. Where's the line? I mean, look at that chart Henrietta's got. In the circle, there's all those lines. I _know_ the Spaces Between are the issue, here, but what about the lines actually connecting? Is there anything metaphysical on those lines? Or, like, these 'tethers…' you know, how is it that Hell can cross planes?"

"Hell is a physical place, and humans are solid beings. Hell is fueled by what manifests in people's minds…"

"So there's a break somewhere," Kenny deduced. "Are they making what's in our minds real, and vice versa?"

"Perhaps. If that is their goal, they are starting with you."

"Guessing cuz you guys protect the town and junk," said Henrietta, puffing out a smoke ring.

"I'm willing to bet there's more than that," said Kenny. "Look, we've all seen that chart. We've seen how things connect. We _need_ to see what's Between. What about that lamp? Is that the only way I can see any of the—"

"Lamp?" Wilcox wondered, haunted eyes widening in their hollow sockets. "The… _the_ lamp? The lamp of Alhazred? It wasn't destroyed?"

"It better not have been," said Henrietta, pointedly. "We're going to need it."

"Yeah," Kenny growled out, "and I'm pretty sure that son of a bitch devil kid has it."

"It's a safe guess," Wilcox nodded somberly.

"If you know about it, too," Kenny pointed out, "any idea where I can find it?"

"The last I heard, it was in Innsmouth," said Wilcox, "in the hands of a friend of the late… my word…" He paused. His hands were trembling again. I wondered how it was at all possible that he could ever find the steadiness to paint. Then again, his works were all products of fits of madness. Perhaps he could work no other way. The painter looked down at his hands, and then directly at me, staring, as if trying to see into my soul. "Captain Marsh…"

Stupidly, the first thing that popped into my mind caused me to blurt out, "I quit football." The others groaned, aside from Henrietta, who just kind of scowled at me, not that that was anything new. Kyle patted my hand as a way of saying a sort of, _A for effort, Stan, but…_ "Wait," I said, stumbling around my words. "Oh. Wait. Sorry. _Who's_ Captain Marsh, now?"

"Head of the Esoteric Order of Dagon," said Wilcox and Henrietta together. Henrietta rose, and went to her cabinet, scouring through her artifacts.

"I had no idea it had stayed in the family," the painter continued.

"Dude," I argued, "there are no _captains_ in my family."

"Oh, Captain Marsh died well over a hundred years ago," Wilcox said, as if in an attempt to reassure me. "1878, I believe."

"Like that _matters,"_ I pressed. "Look, we're geologists. Dad does everything his dad did, and we've been in Colorado for, I don't know, fucking generations."

"It could be a distant relationship."

"Oh, my _GOD!"_ Cartman blurt out, throwing his hands up and standing. He folded his arms and paced for a couple passes, going on, "The fuck does this have to do with Hell and soulless motherfucking Gingers?!"

"Everything's connected," said Henrietta, "when they pass through the Between."

"Can we move on?" Kenny said, at the end of his rope. "Can we just get through what this _Dagon_ thing is? What's it have to do with the lamp? I fucking need that thing."

"Obsessions, Mr. McCormick, are deadlier than nightmares," Wilcox warned. "Please, be patient, and I'll try to explain."

"Here," Henrietta offered. She had returned from her cabinet of horrors with both the _Necronomicon,_ and a large Hebrew text.

"Why do you have a Torah in there?" Kyle wondered, eyeing the yellowed text.

_"Well,"_ Cartman began.

_"Don't_ you even start," Kyle lashed out as a warning to him. Cartman just shrugged, and paced a little more. "Why?" Kyle asked again of Henrietta.

The Goth inhaled deeply off of her quellazaire, and let the smoke billow out from a narrow space between her lips. "I'm only interested in the Old Testament," she explained, "and the guys would kill me if they knew I had a Bible. So I keep it locked up."

"Valid, I guess. But, still, why that; why now?"

"I'm just thinking," said Henrietta, passing her fingers along the pages of both texts. Wilcox's brow collected more sweat as he watched the pages turn. "Those Carnies aren't gonna be relying on Golems much longer, if you guys're picking 'em off so fast. And if the Old Testament was here before the _Book of the Inferno,_ we might be dealing with more than just giant cats.

"See, Dagon is a being of the water," she continued, passing the _Necronomicon_ forward to me. I hesitated, then pulled on my gloves before taking it from her. The page she'd turned to detailed an enormous sea creature, which I'd seen before… yes—in Wilcox's portfolio. "He appears in texts of the Philistines, too, but Captain Marsh summoned up these things under Dagon…"

"Deep Ones," Wilcox shivered.

"Whole domestic cult worshipped him, them, Cthulhu a little." Henrietta paused to take a drag, and I saw Kenny tense. Kenny and Cartman shared a slight glare, and I understood why. Cartman's father, Jack Tenorman, had been a member of the Cult of Cthulhu, and had, at one point, attempted to turn his unborn son into the Shadow of Cthulhu, which had ended up being Kenny's fate instead. (Props to Jack, I guess: his first son had formed an alliance with the spawn of the Devil. What is _wrong_ with some people? I mean, really.) "The residents of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, even mated with some of the Deep Ones, and they're said to have been Immortal, but I doubt it. Plus, anyone from that gene pool alive now's probably had it mostly bred out…"

"Shit," Kenny whispered under his breath.

"What the _fuck_ are you even talking about right now?" I burst. "You're talking shit about family I don't even know if I have!"

"Anyway. Dagon's a water entity, but so's something in here." Henrietta opened up the Torah to the Book of Job, and passed on another illustration of an enormous beast with armored scales. "The Leviathan.

"That thing's a beast of water, and the Behemoth is a creature of land. I wouldn't rule out a couple Biblical beasts as inhabitants of the New Between."

This Carnival was turning into more of a Labyrinth by the second, in the execution of this so-called "game" Damien had secured into place. Every turn was another challenge. My own family history was now being called into question. Cartman's already had been, and was proven by his own mother.

We weren't just talking curses and nightmares anymore. Not even simple madness. This entire ordeal was a matter of family, blood, and history.

Predisposition.

Whatever was happening, _it was meant to._

"Guys," I began tepidly, "if this Dagon shit is true, and I am related in some way to this list of monsters we keep attracting, I just… I can't help—look, are you noticing it, too? How the attacks are being plotted out?"

The others fell silent, but Kyle, who knows my mind, spoke up. "Tenorman basically mentioned it himself, like I said. This is about family. Tenorman wants us all up against everything our individual genetic lines've been exposed to."

"And where there isn't immediate family, he's taking what we have," Kenny commented dourly, looking at the floor. "Attacking us based on how we define ourselves. That's why," he added, looking at Cartman, "one of the first people Damien went to was your mom, I'll bet you anything."

"And why General Disarray seems to be back," I mentioned.

"More like _because,"_ Kyle corrected me. "That little shit probably revived the Ginger movement, since that's not just Tenorman's army, but it was another way to get at me and—"

"Red… is in… the Spaces… Between," Kenny repeated through clenched teeth. "All of this is still coming down to the same thing. They are using her, she's in a rift between realities, and the only way I can find her is getting that lamp."

"That's where Captain Marsh comes back in," Henrietta said calmly. "If some relative of his had it, and they came out to Colorado and Stan's family's been in the rock business for generations…"

Kenny looked excited for the first time that evening, but even that was a weak candle compared to his usual spark. "It's in the mines. We can track it. Right?"

"We can try," I said. "I mean, we're taking this fight to the mountains, yeah? Our next plan is to get to those mines and hopefully the Carnival itself before these 'attractions' go live. I'm sure I could do some more digging at the lab to see if there are any places we could start. We've got equipment at the lab that could probably help pinpoint… wait…"

It dawned on me, in thinking about the geology lab again in conjunction with this artifact, that someone else had been tracking it once, as well.

His name was Nelson. He worked with my father.

He had killed me four years ago to open the Gate to R'lyeh.

Nelson, it was safe to assume, had been working alongside my father because of his name. Because of the glimmer of a possibility that Randy Marsh was somehow a descendant of Captain Obed Marsh from the other side of the country, and that he and I had something in our genetic code that would give us predisposition to, well… attracting weird things. Just like Kenny's curse did. Just like Cartman's blood did. Hell, for all I knew, maybe even Craig.

But even more than that, if Dad and I were related to that long-dead captain, then it had been our family that had buried the lamp in the mines. Technically, it still belonged to us. Damien had just found his way to it first, if Kenny was right…

Either that, or both parties were on a scavenger hunt. And they were planning to use us. Disarray certainly would have been able to tell Damien some of our weaknesses; Disarray and Chaos had probably dug up a whole bunch of things on us in the past. Of course, Butters would probably have made note of that, but it wouldn't hurt to pick his mind again.

I didn't want to say it, but maybe this was a situation that might even call for Chaos…

Like that would happen. We couldn't be sure.

All that I was able to assume, though, was that the Cult of Cthulhu, while focusing most of their efforts on Kenny, on turning him into their new Messenger, into Cthulhu's Shadow, had kept tabs on the rest of us as well. Every last one of us who had grown up here.

When I brought all of this up to the others, nobody objected to my hypothesis.

"I think we should all assume," said Kenny, breathing unevenly, "that we bypassed the possibility of other strange cults playing into the Cult of Cthulhu."

"The Esoteric Order of Dagon is gone," Henrietta told us. "But that doesn't mean the deities are. Dagon wasn't a thing from R'lyeh. It's been stalking Earth long enough."

"So we've got ourselves a bunch of Hell beasts comin' at us, and we're fighting over a fucking _lamp,"_ Cartman said.

"Yes."

"That's kinda lame."

"Not if you saw the lamp itself," said Wilcox. "It can show you the worlds in between everything you can perceive."

"It can lead me to Red," Kenny predicted. "Maybe even help us shut down the Carnival."

"But if the Cult and Damien and them were all tracking us since we were kids," Kyle pointed out, "how do we know they don't have counter-attacks already set up? How do we know we're not all walking into a shit ton of new curses?"

"Well," I realized, my thoughts coming full circle, "we've got something, someone, Hell doesn't. Someone who didn't completely grow up here."

"Wait, who?" Cartman wanted to know.

I glanced over at Kenny, who turned pale. He knew what I was going to say before I spoke:

"We have a Guardian Angel. We have Karen."

Kenny let out all of his breath, and turned to lean against the wall. He stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then, attempting to keep himself fully focused, said in a whisper, "And she never opened her letter. Good girl, sis." Back to us, he added, "We can do this. They're attacking our families so we'll either join them or give up. But fuck that. Know why?"

"Your fight's back," Kyle noted with a grin.

"Damn right it is. Because this is our town. Literally. Weird shit has happened here, but we've always come through."

"Good to hear that from you," Kyle said. "So what's next?"

"Honestly? Let's get some sleep, guys," I suggested. "I know that's not the soundest advice right now, but until we've got that lamp to show us where we're supposed to go, I think we should pay attention to whatever our dreams try to tell us."

"And what happens when the Carnival opens?" Kyle asked, posing the question to anyone.

"Then we shut it down," said Kenny. "They want us on a scavenger hunt? Fine, we'll play, but, guys, we are not letting one minor detail go. I don't want any more nightmares to manifest, and I am sure as hell not losing Red to Damien."

"Let's try to make it so nobody has to lose anything," Kyle added.

"Agreed," I said.

The only one who hadn't spoken up was Cartman. He seemed to be off in his own world. He always did, in a way, but not like this.

Then again, he really was a central figure in all of this.

If planes operate on circles, and some of us—like Kenny and myself—were flung in certain directions while others of us—like Kyle and, I started to believe, Red—were the tethers of logic keeping us in once sphere, then there had to be some kind of center of gravity, around which everything orbited.

God fucking dammit… the two half-brothers were after Cartman to be their center of gravity. But they needed the rest of us, as well. We'd essentially been training for this our entire lives.

Everything that had ever happened in South Park…

It wasn't the town.

It was us.

We existed outside of certain rules. Our hometown was a rift in the Spaces Between. Now, Red had been dragged between the cracks, a Carnival was being erected as a celebration for the building of a new Circle of Hell, and we, the Shadow League, led by the only man alive who had been born Immortal and managed to defeat that curse, were the only ones who could do anything about it. Oh, and we would…

Because it was in our blood. Every last one of us.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park _is - c - Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

This chapter brought to you by science. This stuff is fun to speculate. XD (And yes, the title is a reference to another Lovecraft story… ^^) Many comments on _Cthulhu Fhtagn_ did point out the Captain Marsh possibility (the character appears in _The Shadow over Innsmouth)_, especially given the Donovan reference (from _The Call of Cthulhu)…_ and you were right! ^^ Bringing Dagon in during the first part would, I think, have crowded the first story a bit much; the reference worked its way into this one, though~ :3

More _Inferno_ stuff coming very soon, as we move into more action-heavy chapters. Due to both of our crazy schedules, we are skipping another week (sorry, ahh), but the next chapter will be posted on **Wednesday, October 24****th****!** :3

Thank you so much for reading!

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn.

– – –


	13. Ep 13: Breach

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

_Kenny_

Big shocker of a confession: I'm not much of a reader.

I'll get through maybe one long book per summer, if I feel like it. It's not that I _don't_ read, I just don't like being _told to,_ so my interest kinda winds down when it's homework. At school, my girlfriend would tend to be the one sitting right next to me, making me go through textbooks and assigned novels (often stripping as a reward, though that generally got my mind right off books completely). I can't really get into things that don't immediately interest me. Unless it's, you know, work-related.

I have difficulty concentrating on the things I'm supposed to read as it is… having the probability of listing in and out of that weird, dreamlike state was not going to be helpful, now. Fortunately, I was surrounded by others who not only were avid readers, but who had a working knowledge of the particular texts the League currently needed to pour over. Kyle's bookstore job was definitely a bonus, after Henrietta's stacks of texts.

None of us was necessarily a specialist, though. Yeah, we had Stan on the geology end of things, and Ike, Timmy and Bebe as pretty solid research and communications experts, but not even Henrietta had a working knowledge of, well… spiritual things outside of her once-preferred religion of Cthulhu Cultism. She was able to help Stan through understanding the possibility of his blood relationship to the man who'd founded the Dagon cult (and I'll be honest, I was able to keep myself a little more focused now that I knew there were things like the Old Ones still out there, close to us), and knew her way through the _Inferno_ well enough, but other texts were only passing interests to her. We did have Kyle and Ike looking into things on the _Torah_ end, since Henrietta had mentioned the possibility of Damien's recruitment of Biblical beasts, but Damien himself had flinched at the mention of another text entirely.

My confrontation with him in the Goths' office felt like it had taken place years ago, now. The harder it became to sleep, the stranger it was to try keeping track of time. Trying to get by without Red was hard enough. Her parents had called me twice, looking for her, and I'd made up some bullshit apology about having to work for the first call, and left the second to go to voicemail. I still hadn't listened to it, three days later.

Shit just started stacking up. The only reason I knew it had been three days was thanks to Karen and the guys reminding me. Three days. Three fucking days and I'd gotten maybe a grand total of five hours of real, planned sleep.

I'd beaten Immortality, Goddammit, that didn't mean I never wanted to rest ever again. I had to get some fucking sleep, but there seemed to be thousands of outside forces trying to convince me that closing my eyes would be the end of—fuck, I didn't even know. The end of something. Me, maybe. My perception of reality, probably.

When I lay in bed, awake, alone, all I could think of was that we'd started following Damien's breadcrumbs too late. Hell would rise up before we even saw them building. Tenorman would get that Carnival going, and we were too late. We were just plain too late.

Then I'd close my eyes and my brain would go blank, letting me concentrate.

I wasn't dreaming when I slept, anymore. Visions came more steadily when I was wide awake, and attempting to be a functional member of society. Pretty much the only way I could force myself to concentrate was to inundate myself with League work.

"They're just trying to call you out," Karen told me, the afternoon of the third day since the art opening. "They're trying to get to you through nightmares, they're trying to put you out of commission."

"Then I don't get why we're stalling," I muttered.

We were in the kitchenette of the League base, our home for the past four years. As I half-heartedly managed to eat the sandwich my sister had prepared for me, the two of us looked for the umpteenth time over the list and charts of mine sites in our area that Stan, Kyle and Ike had compiled over the past couple of days. "We aren't stalling," Karen sighed. "We just need another big break of information."

"Tonight, right?"

My sister nodded. "You sure you'll be all right?" she double-checked with me.

"If they're calling me out, Karen, I have to take missions no matter what," I reminded her.

Karen was silent for a few seconds; her answer then came in the form of placing her hand on my shoulder as she said, "I'm going to help you any way I can, Kenny. I want to help you with anything you might come across. And that goes for on the field, too. You know that."

I ticked my head up and gave her a kind of affirmative grunt. It was basically all I could manage right then, since I was still so out of it.

There was some comfort in having my sister close, not just now, but in the field as well. Like always, the Guardian Angel would have my back. That allowed me to focus on other things like refueling. At least I could manage enough coordination to eat.

As I thought those exact words, I reached out to grab a bag of potato chips and knocked over my glass of milk.

Great, I thought. Never assume things can't possibly get worse. Then stupid shit like spilling your drink happens. Or it rains. Or your enemies steal your girlfriend.

But I was getting distracted again. My thoughts needed to be on the matter at hand, which was obtaining specific information.

Despite my sister's elementary education, she retained only a margin of her _Book of Mormon_ teachings, which, of course, was understandable. Luckily, we knew just who could help us with that bit of required reading. So the Wolf at the Goths' door had been something of a blessing in disguise (despite the actually, oh, really tragic events added to it), since a few of us had to take a courtesy trip to Home Depot for extra tools and lumber needed to fix up the shop.

The objective that evening was practically simple: a group would be stationed around the premises, concealed until the sky grew dark, and a smaller group would head inside, as a buffer for either Stan, Karen or myself to have a little talk with Gary Harrison. Having recently returned from his Mission, Gary was, according to Stan (the most frequent of us to visit the store), never at a loss to discuss his experience, stories, or teachings. All I wanted was some kind of clue that would lead to our understanding of why Damien had flinched upon the naming of that text.

As it was, I placed TupperWear, Mosquito and the Coon "in charge" (I quote for the Coon's case, mostly) outside, with Endgame, Marpesia and Harmony rounding the group out; Karen and I went inside, along with Stan and Kyle, the latter of whom was fighting the nagging urge to get rid of the sweatshirt he was wearing.

"At least this place is air-conditioned," he complained, tilting his head to the ceiling the moment the four of us crossed the automated threshold of the enormous store.

"Just take it off if it's hot," I mumbled, absently checking my phone. The only thing on there was the time, and the alert for the voicemail from Red's parents. I'd been checking it somewhat obsessively, as if at any second I'd just get a text from her and everything would be fine.

Kyle groaned. "It was hard enough trying to come up with something to tell my parents."

"About what?" I blankly checked around us for anything unsightly. Nobody around us who seemed out of place; Kyle was the only one in close proximity with red hair.

"…My arms," Kyle explained, sounding hesitant to speak. Oh. Beyond that, too, we'd come slightly more prepared than we'd been in the past: each of us wore at least a hint of our uniforms under our street clothes; in my case, the finishing touches were stashed in Karen's purse.

I shrugged to show I understood. Kyle wasn't convinced, and pressed, "Dude, you okay? You awake?"

Just the mention of the word _awake_ made me yawn.

I wasn't at my best, but we did, at least, have a plan that I figured I'd be able to follow, no matter how out of it I might have been. It was understood that, if needed, any of us could head onto the field at a moment's notice. That was just the way we needed to operate, now. It had been working for a while, and it was our best course of action. Objective number one, however, was making sure at least one of us could get some one-on-one time with Gary.

We hadn't checked in with him, I realized, since the night the Harrisons' home had been targeted. If Damien wanted more out of the guy or his family than just the slight Ginger connection, he was taking his time. Meaning that this was one case we weren't going to fall behind on.

Every possible lead was a step closer toward the mines, toward the lamp, and toward the Carnival; toward the Dreamlands. Make things fit, and we'd find what we needed before Hell could have too much of an upper hand.

When Kyle gave me another disbelieving look, and after Karen grabbed my arm to keep me walking straight forward, I replied in as level a tone as I could manage, "Sorry, man. I'm tired, but I'm good."

"Any new… uh…?" Stan wondered.

Now, while I'm not a reader, I kind of do enjoy writing, to be honest. Growing up, we didn't have much in the way of books at our family home, so I used to write my own stories to tell Karen when we were little. A lot of them were based on stories I'd hear at school, fairy tales and things like that, but every once in a while, I'd have an interesting dream that I'd write about for her. (This stopped when I started having wet dreams in third or fourth grade, but I'd keep telling her the clean stuff.)

That being said, I had more or less written about my own dream experiences before… just not to the extent that Wilcox had advised the four of us to. I'd spoken to Karen on the subject of the dream journals, as well, and she had warned me that the more I wanted to see something, the less likely it was that I'd actually dream about it. All the more reason to find that lamp.

So I knew exactly what Stan was asking: any progress? Any new windows, new doors, new dreams, new leads?

No.

Nothing.

Just three fucking days of feeling like shit, feeling like I had no grasp on reality.

Doubt was starting to set in on my mind something awful. Hopefully a talk with someone like Gary would get me seeing things in a slightly more optimistic light, but I knew I wouldn't be able to breathe normally until we broke through to the Spaces Between, stopped Damien and Tenorman's little plots, and saved Red, among the others who had to have been in the same predicament.

I shook my head, only able to process one thing at a time. Red wasn't the only one in the Dreamlands: Sally Turner's parents, Sargeant Yates' wife… everyone being used as blackmail and bait were stranded somewhere. It was the why, though, it was the fucking _why_ that we had to figure out. Obviously, there was construction going on. They were building Hell up. But it bothered me that there was not yet a solid _why._

Why bring Hell to Earth, unless there was a good fucking reason? Why recruit an army? Toying with the Circles meant that everything would get thrown out of balance, even Hell. So where the fuck did we come in? Why was any of this necessary?

Most importantly: were we on the right path toward coming out on top? Or were we just getting pulled along on one long, sick ride?

I couldn't doubt.

I hadn't before, and I should not have been giving in to something like that now. It just sucked being so exhausted, so spent, so worried all the time. Three days and my drive had just gone down, in increments by the hour, it seemed.

So I let Karen pull me along, I took Stan and Kyle's worried glances, and I kept my mouth shut, not knowing what I might start saying or how I'd say it. I had to blink to keep myself awake, in the harsh fluorescents of the superstore. The light was garish, blinding, and overwhelming, but it wasn't just the light that made me feel like something was off.

When we'd made it to the department that Gary Harrison worked in, Toolshed's technician was not alone. Something else, too, showed in the nervous stance Gary was taking on, which was rather uncharacteristic of him. That guy always seemed so damn pleasant and upbeat about life, I didn't think he could even really _get_ nervous.

What seemed to be putting him off was something that was instantly not okay in my book, either: a pale-faced, fire-headed man, whose build was the very definition of gangly, stood over the service desk at which our former classmate was working, watching his every move. Watching, at least, when his lecherous yellow eyes weren't falling on another person, this one a well-framed blonde girl around my sister's age. Gary was trying his hardest not to let the man's wandering eyes bother him as he handed the girl a packet of information, and pretended not to notice when the man followed the girl a few paces before turning back toward an aisle as she left with someone who was obviously her father.

As the gangly Ginger man turned, his eyes lit on Karen, and he smirked at her before returning to Gary's desk. I already hated the guy, and it was not helping his case to be a redhead. Which, honestly, was something that bothered me in a different way: despite our knowing that a lot of real Ginger involvement with Tenorman's side of the Carnival was forced or the result of blackmail, the 'ringleaders,' so they called themselves, were getting to me all the same, making me instantly blanch at the sight of anyone who wasn't my girlfriend that bore that distinguishing feature.

I hate to say it, but, yeah, even Kyle. The guy was like a fucking brother to me, but over the past three days, I'd been finding him increasingly difficult to approach or speak to. It was all on me, too, most likely. I was paranoid. Doubting, and paranoid, and only half-awake.

Not a good mixture for someone who's supposed to protect the fucking town.

In many ways, I felt like I was already in Hell.

I moved when Karen got me to move, but kept an eye on her around the strange new man still haunting Gary's desk space. As we approached, the clearly less pious of the two men rounded the station and, speaking only to Karen, flashed a white grin as he greeted in a purr, "Good evening. Please, don't hesitate to speak to me if there is anything I can do for you."

Karen was stunned speechless, not to say that the rest of us weren't. My sister stuttered over an unclear syllable for a moment, but it was once the man's eyes began wandering down from my sister's face that I interrupted harshly, "Can I help _you?"_

The man gave me an odd glare, passed a look over Karen again, then tapped the top of a binder on top of Gary's desk. The well-kept Mormon had been watching the man suspiciously and uncomfortably the entire time, but he straightened up, and turned the binder open. Tucked into the front pocket, I noticed, was a crisp white envelope. Not much of a stretch of my unreliable imagination to guess that it was sealed in red wax.

I was glad that we'd been compelled to pay Gary a visit, and much moreso for the fact that we'd come prepared for anything. If nothing else, I was pretty fucking ready for a fight, should one arise, after this strange man's blatant oggling of my little sister. Who had a boyfriend. And _was my sister._ Ugh.

"Keep up the good work, Harrison," the man said to Gary as he began following in the path of a female employee who crossed past the desk with a customer. The man watched the woman, probably in her mid-thirties, walk the path toward the registers at the front of the store, but continued, "Tonight might be a good one to take some work home with you if you want that transfer."

Gary nodded, holding his breath so as to not speak out about the man's behavior, then finally let out, "Yes, sir."

Another glance at Karen, and the man said, "Now, why don't you see what you can do for this little angel?"

Not okay. _Not okay._

But he was gone before I could yell at him about anything. Karen, on the other hand, walked us toward Gary's service desk and immediately leaned against it to hold herself up more steadily, and demanded, "What is _with_ that guy?!"

"Dude," Stan commented sourly as he and Kyle caught up. "New boss?"

"Oh, they're doing all sorts of shifting around," Gary answered, as if unaffected. Sheepishly, he added, "Hi, guys. Hello, Karen."

"Um, hi. Shouldn't you report that?" Karen asked, gesturing after the man. "That's really not okay."

Gary bit his lip, wanting, I could tell, not to speak ill of another person. "He's… look, he has his own methods for, um… running floor operations."

"Methods?" Karen frowned, folding her arms. "He's a total asshole to women! Are you going to just sit back and let him do that to female employees_ and_ customers?"

The Mormon flinched at her simple cussing, but, despite seeming concerned about the welfare of the women around us, he simply stammered, "I'm sorry, Karen, but he's been like that since he came in three days ago. I can't—"

"Aren't you a manager by now?" Stan pointed out. "You could…"

"Oh, gosh," Gary lamented. "I'm looking into a transfer, so I've been limited..."

He seemed ready to elaborate on the subject when a man's voice rang out over the loudspeaker, signaling that shoppers had twenty minutes to complete their purchases before the store would be closing down for the evening. Perfect, for us.

Gary heaved a sigh, and returned to his paperwork. "Sorry, guys," he said, dolefully, "was there something I could help you with? I'm one of the head closers, so I've gotta kinda get things in shape, but let me know if there's anything specific."

I caught Stan's worried glance, and he gave me a slight nod before saying to Gary, "We've got some basic stuff for home improvement work to load up on. If I give you a list now, can you add it to my tab?"

"Sure thing," said Gary, smiling despite his obvious nerves. A quick look around told me that the new head of staff had circled around again. His yellow eyes fixed on our Mormon friend, causing Gary to straighten quickly, snap his folder of evening work shut, and duck under his desk for another binder, which he set down forcefully on the shining top of the work station. He flinched, and mumbled, "Sorry. I'm... I haven't been getting really good sleep lately."

"Yeah?" I wondered. My mind began listing, but I ignored the dizzy drowsiness that seemed to be coming on.

"Maybe it's the weather," Gary shrugged. "I don't know. I'm readjusting, still, or something. I got so used to Detroit."

Through the wire I was wearing, I heard the Coon scoff, "He served his Mission in fucking _Detroit?"_

"Shut up," I warned.

"What?"

"Not you, Gary."

The Mormon regarded my odd little pass-off, but was, once again, unaffected. He warily eyed the man stalking past the rows of home improvement merchandise again, then drummed his fingers on the tabletop as he flipped through the binder to the list of _M_ names, marked with a yellow flag. "Your dad's?" Gary wondered. "Stan?"

Kyle had, I noticed, begun wandering aisles himself, pretending to be pricing certain items while keeping an eye on the manager; Stan was similarly watching the odd man's movements from where he stood, but snapped back to the conversation at the mention of his name. "My dad's what?"

"Tab," Gary clarified. He did sound tired.

"No, dude, mine."

I nearly nudged Stan to get him to stop leading into possible League territory, but remembered that a reveal was, in this case, almost inevitable. Select people knew who we were, of course: Henrietta, Token's parents, Wilcox... if anyone else had to know, I figured the second eldest of the Harrison boys was one of the best in town with keeping secrets.

"You don't have a tab."

Karen turned pale when the Ginger man passed her another suggestive look before he slunk around a corner. I was itching to go beat the man senseless for being so ocularly invasive, but other than that, I had no foundation for disliking him. Yet.

"For fuck's sake," I grunted, "Gary, man, that new boss of yours is a class A letch. Probably pedo. Report that shit."

Gary shakily tapped the desk, trying not to get upset. "Kenny, please," he said, "there's really only so much I can do. He came in unexpectedly, and I've hardly gotten to know him, so—"

"You don't have to," I pressed. "He's obviously sick."

"But—"

The man in question stalked back through the same aisle again, this time with a cell phone raised to his ear. I caught him saying something about "closing operations," but little else.

"Wait a sec. I should've—Stan." I shifted only my eyes to watch Kyle grab his boyfriend's arm, to see a look of instant understanding and shock set into his face. "We've seen him. That Ginger guy."

"What?"

"We've _seen him,"_ Kyle insisted in a hiss. While Stan remained in the dark, Kyle rolled his eyes and insisted, "Harbucks."

Stan did a subtle double-take before his eyes snapped open wide. "Shit," he whispered.

Gary cleared his throat. While trying to let on that it was only the curse word that bothered him a little, he began warily, "Guys, can I help you? The store's closing, so I need to do a sweep to relieve people. Not that I don't want to help out if I can, I'm just…"

"Dude, Gary, hold up, we just saw that guy," Stan insisted. "Your new boss, manager, whoever he is."

I felt a hand on my shoulder but did not turn. It was too natural.

"I don't understand."

"He was just at Harbucks a few weeks ago," Kyle added. "New manager over there. And when we were leaving he—"

The speakers overhead began to crackle, and faintly, a grating, hurdy-gurdy version of Radiohead's "In Limbo" to play. Yeah: damn good thing we came prepared. I could feel everyone around me hold their breath. The grip on my shoulder tightened. I knew whose touch it was; why wouldn't it be there?

"It's okay, Red," I heard myself say.

"Kenny?" Karen tried, nudging me from the side.

"Ladies and gentlemen," a strained nasal voice sounded through the high, vast walls of the enormous building, "we apologize for any inconvenience, but we are issuing an early closing this evening. We strongly encourage all non-employees to return tomorrow, when we open at ten o'clock. Thank you. Be sure to pick up a flyer on your way out for a new town event."

With baited breath, Gary began, "Sorry, guys, this is weird. I didn't hear anything about an early close. L-look, Karen, I'm sorry about what happened, um… if you guys still need anything, come on back tomorrow, but right now I should go do a floor sweep so—"

The speakers crackled louder, as the hurdy-gurdy music was superimposed with the real song, lyrics and all: _"You're living in a fantasy world / I'm lost at sea / Don't bother me / I've lost my way—"_

Someone touched the small of my back. This time, it was not Red's touch—it was hot, as if I'd been touched by coals. I whirled around, only to fall into somebody's arms. And then everything seemed to be right again.

I drew in a deep breath; the harsh fluorescent lights were replaced with something softer, and Red caught me from tripping forward. I stood back, and saw her. Plain as day. My heart began pounding, and nothing else around me affected me anymore. I pinched my arm. She was still there.

And she smiled.

I swear to God, I was not hallucinating. I couldn't have been. Right?

But—

"Red?" I began, warily. I hadn't even been able to check in with her again, after the fiasco three nights prior. Doubt returned to me, this time in the form of disbelieving the very strange dreams that had been causing me to second-guess and feel that we'd fallen behind in the first place. Red was right there in front of me, though, with me, with all of us…

"I'm all right," she said. She hugged me tightly, and, warily, I pulled her in. And I could feel her, heartbeat and all. Red was there, and whole, and breathing; she smelled like a garden. Every one of my senses told me that she was with me.

Why doubt? Who told me to doubt?

"He can't bother me too much, if I've got you around," Red continued on.

I grabbed at her long, soft hair, and drew in a long breath. My eyes stung. "I thought they'd taken you," I whispered.

"Kenny?"

"Mmhmm?"

I stepped back to look at her. Damien was fucking with my head, making me think she was gone. Had that honestly been the nightmare all along? That she'd been right there, and something had been shadowing her away from my view…?

"I love you," Red told me, stroking my cheek. I felt it perfectly, yet I was still too afraid to blink, just in case the moment left me.

"Red," I breathed with relief. "Thank God you're here. I thought I was dreaming."

She stepped back, let go of me… smiled sadly, and whispered, "You are."

She was still wearing her formal dress from the night of the event.

Suddenly, I heard my sister's voice scream out, _"BEHIND YOU!"_

Harsh light beat into the room once again as I tried desperately to cling onto Red's image, but I'd been jarred out of sleepwalking: my circles un-crossed. Red was, once again, nowhere to be found.

But that could mean only one thing, to me: the Spaces Between were not as unreachable as I'd thought. They were everywhere. Possibly crossing directly with our own physical reality. "KENNY!" Karen screamed.

_"Don't give up,"_ I swore I heard Red speak.

No time to think, no time to move.

I was forced awake.

It had entered my mind, the moment I'd first seen the guy, that Gary Harrison's new boss was among Damien's recruits. No shit. Spot-on sleuthing, Kenny McCormick. What else is new in the land of obvious coincidences?

He was directly behind me when I regained consciousness, and I half expected him to pull a gun on me. As it was, though, he simply struck me across the face. My sister screamed, and I buckled forward, my cheek stinging in the spot that he'd hit. When the initial shock subsided, however, I realized that, somehow, the man had drawn blood—I hadn't just been hit, the fucker had scratched me. Clawed, more like.

"Stand by," I managed to get out into the wire.

"KENNY!" Karen yelped.

I got one look at the gangly man, flicking my blood off of his fingertips and onto the floor, before Stan took charge and shouted, "Everyone down! Now!"

Before I knew it, I was being thrown behind Gary's work desk. Still dazed, I took stock of the others: Karen was controlling her own sense of panic in order to watch over me, in my disturbing, listing state; Kyle had grabbed an exacto knife from one of the desk shelves and was acting as a primary lookout. Before I could read more of Stan's reaction, I saw Gary, gritting his teeth, press a button underneath his computer.

"What was that?" Stan wondered. "What'd you just do?"

"K-Kenn—Kenny's bleeding!" Gary stammered, clearly confused and overwhelmed. His hair and attire gave off his usual, calm air, but panic was etched all over his expression. "So I—"

"I'll be fine," I mumbled.

"Yeah, I don't know about that," my sister said, pressing her right palm to my forehead. "Kenny, where _are_ you?"

She took hold of either side of my face and stared right into my eyes. Just as I could have sworn Red had been doing moments ago.

That question was so fucking loaded. I'd hardly been processing anything all day. I knew that we were on a mission. I knew that we had people to talk to and objectives to achieve, but I knew that I was off. Damien was attacking my reality; the life I'd worked so fucking hard to earn, he was trying to strip it down. Kill me off.

_Death is Immortal._

Shatter one reality, and he could shatter anything. Anyone's head, anyone's heart, anyone's dreams, if he could creep through them so easily.

So where was I?

I was in the same place I'd always been. But Spaces were colliding around it. There'd been a rip in everything that lay Between our world and Damien's, and pretty soon there'd be no way to perceive them separately.

I shook my head. "I'll be okay, Karen," I told her. "Let's just send this thing back to Hell."

Gary let out a yell, and it was echoed by a grating growl.

"Gary, what was that thing you pushed?" Kyle asked.

Shaking, breathing quite unevenly, Gary managed, "That button calls the police."

"What?!" I snapped. "NO!"

It'd go straight to Yates. No.

"…Guys…?" Stan warned us. He was the only one of our group currently standing, but he very slowly, cautiously shifted to kneel.

He didn't make it before I heard a woman's voice shout, "What's going on?"

I got up to my knees, forcing myself to pay attention and stay alert, in order to have the same view Stan did. The gangly man who'd clawed me was of the same ilk as the dusty woman from the art gallery, all right. I saw clearly the female store employee that the letch had been eyeing minutes before, rushing toward the desk.

An enormous Leopard leapt into her path. She stumbled back and screamed, and both Stan and I were ready to rush in, but the beast snapped the woman in half before either of us could move.

"FUCK!" we both shouted… which, of course, only got the huge creature, itself nearly half as tall as the large shelving units around us, to notice us.

"Guys," Stan tapped into the wire, "I think we've got a night ahead of us. Can we get someone inside?"

"What just happened?!" Gary tried not to make his words sound like a demand.

"Dude, can you do us a favor and stop asking?" I requested.

"Gosh darn it, Kenny, I'm sorry, but I'm really confused, and just what on Earth is that thing out there?!" He paused for a second before adding, "And pardon my language!" Oh, boy.

"Gary, Kenny, guys, let's just—one thing at a time," Karen requested. "Kenny, let's you and me get Gary and anyone else who's still working _out of here._ Kyle? Stan?"

"We've got this," Kyle said, "and the other guys'll be in soon."

"Other—_who?"_ Gary insisted. "Please! Someone tell me—"

"Okay..." Stan took a quick survey of the room from our makeshift barricade, then drew in his breath and began rummaging for a black box two shelves under Gary's computer. "Really only one way to explain this right."

"Stan, no offense, but what are you doing?" the terrified shop employee asked. His voice swelled from attempts to stay calm and rational to peaks of absolute confusion and terror. I kind of couldn't blame the guy. "That's—that box isn't, um—"

"I know, dude, it's cool, but, uh, kinda got something to tell you."

From his jeans pocket, Stan pulled out his keys. The growl from the enormous cat sounded from just a couple feet away, and as Stan fitted a key to a lock on the black box as he removed it from the shelf, he asked, "Kyle, can you, uh...?"

"We're actually doing this?" Kyle wondered, opening the question to me and Karen as well.

It was a tough call, of course, but it was one we needed to make. If we were going to talk to him... particularly if he was going to continue to be a Carnival target, Gary Harrison had to learn a couple of things. "Go for it," I urged.

Kyle nodded, said, "Sorry about this, dude," to Gary, then stood, outstretched his right arm, coaxed the desk chair up off of the floor, and hurled it toward the Leopard. I heard an irate yowl sound from the cat, and Kyle shouted, "Okay, he's definitely pissed off, Stan, you might wanna hurry!"

The click sounded from the box a second later, and from it, Stan pulled out a stocked toolbelt, a perfectly matching backup to the standard one he wore on the field as Toolshed. He then un-zipped his windbreaker, revealing his white uniform shirt underneath, and dug into the box again for a pair of personalized work gloves.

"What the living heck is going ON?!" Gary yelped, backing away from us by means of scooting along the floor.

Stan rose, pocketed his keys again, and stepped past Gary to a display with various work goggles. He selected an orange-tinted pair, ripped off the cardboard and plastic coating, and slid them on, saying, "Sorry, not the best circumstances to fully explain, but, uh..." He cleared his throat, pulled both screwdrivers from the belt, and continued, now affecting his voice to the tone he'd adopt for League purposes, "Just charge my tab. I'll pay extra if you want."

Gary was more than stunned. _"Toolshed...?"_

"Toolshed!" Kyle echoed. "Need you! Now! Kenny, Karen, if you guys're gonna leave, I'd pick now as a pretty good time!"

I nodded, got to my feet, and, along with Karen, helped the bewildered Gary up.

"Hold on, hold on, hold _on!"_ Gary cried out, as Karen and I began making a dash for the door. "Stan Marsh is Toolshed?! _Stan Marsh_ is—"

"YES," I said quickly. "We'll fill you in, but for right now, let's take that final floor sweep you were talking about. How many people are still on the job?"

"I—I-I-I don't know, t-twenty?"

"Okay. Where'll we find them?" I wondered. As we ran down the main, open area of the building toward the front door, I looked down aisles, trying to locate anyone that needed a push outside and out of harm's way.

"I don't—" Gary cut himself off with a startled yell, sounded at the sight of the Leopard, who had made a dash toward and after us. "It's a—a le—a leopa—"

"It's _the_ Leopard," I corrected.

_"What?!"_

"Move!" Karen cried out, pushing me and Gary down the nearest aisle.

I hurled down a large, thick display stand that we could use as a barrier, mostly in the interest of getting changed. Fast. A nod to my sister and she opened her pocketbook, in which she'd stashed my hood and gloves.

"Sorry about this, man," I said to Gary, who was untying his uniform apron as I pulled my mask out of my jeans pocket.

Gary shook his head. "I'm not getting too much right now, but if Stan's Toolshed, and if I just saw Kyle moving things without touching them, then that means he's gotta be the Human Kite, which would make you—"

I nodded. "We're all in the Shadow League," I confirmed. "Me, Karen… a whole bunch of us."

"What is this _'the_ Leopard' thing?" Gary demanded.

"Long story," I admitted. "Listen. We don't have time to explain right now, but there's a lot we need to fill you in on."

"Me personally? Why _me?"_

"We have pretty good reason to believe you and your family are being targeted right now." I pulled off my long-sleeved shirt, to expose the uniform I'd been wearing underneath. "Plus," I added, as Karen slid my caped hood on over my head for me, "we could use your help."

"Why? What can I do?"

Karen handed me my gloves, and as I yanked them on, I lowered my voice to the tone I affected as Mysterion, and said, "For starters, might be helpful to pray. None of us are very good at it."

Gary gnawed at his lower lip. I heard a growl sound from the end of the aisle. As I slid off my jeans and secured my utility belt into place, Gary—shaking like hell but bravely gritting his too-white teeth—took a pair of scissors from the pocket of his apron, then gathered up the garment into a ball, and tied it together such that the strings still dangled. He cut the neck to add extra dangling strings, then peeked up over the side of our barrier at the approaching enormous feline.

"You should stay down," I warned him.

He gave me a nervous, disbelieving look. "Sorry, um… M-Myst—gosh, you're _actually_ Mysterion…" he said, processing as he spoke "but I'm kind of processing a lot at once and I'm pretty sure this is just a really bad dream, so I'm gonna do the only thing I can think of and go with it."

"I promise we'll explain," Karen assured him.

Gary shook his head. "Nope, right now, I'm just going to think I'm dreaming. Please understand."

"Oh," I told him, "I do."

"What're you doing with that apron, then?" Karen wondered.

Gary shrugged. "Cats love string."

"What?"

"Gosh, I hope this works."

Without another word, he hurled the balled-up garment over the Leopard's head. Motherfucker—it was really that easy. The large cat looked up as the piece sailed overhead, and made a bite for it. No sooner had it snapped its jaws shut, however, than an enormous coil of chain wound itself around the Leopard's neck.

The Leopard let out a yowl and tripped backwards, one huge paw coming down on the makeshift ball, the other just narrowly missing a moving figure who I recognized after a quick flash as the Human Kite, fully in uniform but _sans-_glider.

"One too many escaped fuckin' Carnival animals, lately," he complained, yanking down on the other end of the long chain, which was still mostly coiled around an industrial-sized spool a foot or two off to Kite's left. "Mysterion, you active?" he called over.

"Active and out," I said, tapping Gary and Karen on their backs to get them to stand and start for the door again.

"Good," I heard Mosquito announce through the wire; "we'll trade—Endgame and TupperWear are on their way in, if we can get you out here."

"What about the Leopard?" Gary wondered.

"Keep that damn cat in here," I instructed. "If we—"

The Leopard made a quick jerk, and bit down at the Human Kite; his aim was deflected at the last second by a hard hit across the skull from Toolshed, who darted in on the scene from the edge of the aisle to the right of the one we were making our way out of. Toolshed whacked the Leopard a second time with his newly-acquired sledgehammer, the force of which caused Kite to let go of the massive chain.

Though he made another grab for it, the Leopard took chase after the three of us, so I pushed Karen and Gary ahead, grabbing a gun from my boot, where I'd earlier stashed it. I whirled around to see the enormous cat descending on me, but a second later, TupperWear landed on its neck, kicking the beast to the ground as he shouted, "Move! Everyone, _move!"_

"Come on," Karen urged, grabbing my wrist and yanking me out of the way.

My feet hit the ground at a rate faster than my brain could process. I was still afraid that I might again slip into that struggling no-man's-land between a waking dream and reality; despite everything, I was still looking around in the physical world for Red. It was tough to tell what was a nightmare, what was perceived, and what was real. More than anything now, though, I was just getting sick of it—sick of being jostled around, of feeling that way, of not being able to trust myself. So I did the best I could, I shook the thoughts off, I kept on going. That was my devotion to my work: _just keep going._

The front doors were wide open, and I saw at the entrance Endgame, with Kite's glider in hand ready to be passed off, pushing a man out, who must have been a straggling employee. Gary attempted to sigh, though his breath caught—his mix of relief and nerves was understandable, and he certainly wasn't the only one in a whirlwind of muddled emotions regarding the situation.

"Red Serge did a scan," Endgame informed me, as Karen tugged Gary out toward the parking lot. "We're clear on civilians in here, but you're not gonna like what's going on outside. We might need you negotiating, though."

"Negotiating?" I repeated in awe of our opponents' tenacity. "What the fuck are they up to?"

"I don't know, but I hope Mosquito and them can get these people out of here. Me and TupperWear are gonna stick it out in here."

I nodded, and prepared to take my leave, but as I did, Endgame grabbed my arm. I had to guess that he was staring straight at me, but I could see nothing even resembling an outline of his eyes behind the dark glasses he had to wear on the job. He'd been a great addition to the team, right from the start; I never could have guessed that he'd end up taking things as heavily as the rest of us did, but given that he was among those of us who apparently attracted a high volume of strange happenings to our town, I was glad for his service. Not to mention attention to detail:

"It's the Leopard in here, right?" he checked.

"You got it. Toolshed and Kite are holding him back right now."

Endgame let himself smirk. "Bet Toolshed's in heaven."

"Better than the alternative," I agreed.

"Huh, no shit." Shaking his head, he continued, "Speaking of that, I've got a feeling we're all gonna be getting Carnival tickets here, pretty soon."

"Yeah?"

"Based on what we've got outside, shit's about to start."

I thanked my teammate and continued along behind my sister and our Mormon friend.

Once outside, we were welcomed by a screaming silence. A harsh red light flooded the nearly empty parking lot, and marking out a central location for the idling helicopter—the GSM's preferred mode of transit—were taut lengths of yellow police tape.

Rather, however, than the usual warning of _Police Line: Do Not Cross,_ or just regular old _Caution,_ the tape was plastered with the thick black words: _Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here._ Finishing the circle of yellow tape was none other than our very own county sargeant.

I was so done with him.

"Yates!" I shouted. "What are you doing?" I could only assume his presence was what prompted Endgame's negotiation assumption, though I had no idea how effective anything I could say would be.

The cop gave no answer at first. He looked over at us dully, but even through the nothingness that he projected, I knew that those eyes of his had seen Hell. Time slowed to a crawl before he spoke… just enough time for me to notice the crowd of people being ushered into the helicopter. My heart sank, knowing we were too late to divert the path of any of the employees who'd just fled from the terror inside the building.

"YATES!" I hollered again. "Those are innocent people! Tell me you know what that fucking helicopter is and that what you're doing is _completely un-civil."_

He regarded me silently, opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, then, after a glance over his shoulder, said simply, "Sorry, Mysterion, but this is the way things've gotta be."

With that, he boarded the helicopter behind the last of the innocent people caught in the evening's cross-fire. Fuck if they were getting away with that, though…

"Don't fuck with me, Yates!" I shouted, storming forward. Stunned, Gary followed, and Karen grabbed his arm to keep him back. "We can't work together if you side with them on this," I warned the officer. "Ever again. You got that?!"

"What… but he's the head of the police force!" Gary sputtered in disbelief. His breathing had become uneven, and I saw him wringing his hands slowly as he surveyed the terrible scene. "What's he doing? What's any of this?"

"They're not wasting any fucking time," I noted, "that's for sure."

"What?" Gary asked, panicking. "Who are 'they,' Kenny? What the heck is going on? Where's that helicopter taking everyone? That's—I know _all of them!"_ Karen and I rushed forward to grab Gary back as he made a run for his fellow employees. "Ke—M-Mysterion, please, let go, I have to—gosh, where are all the rest of the cops when you need them?"

"Cops're never around when you need 'em." Never thought I'd be as at-ease upon hearing the Coon's voice as I was at that very moment. "That's where we come in."

As the helicopter blades began pulsing faster and faster, in stepped the Coon, who gave Gary a once-over (probably still hung up about that fucking Detroit comment, the idiot…) before holding out his taloned hands, ready to jump into action on the offensive. "We tried to stop 'em, but you ain't seen the worst of what's out here," he grunted, squinting against the harsh wind that the now airborne vehicle in front of us produced.

The wind whipped through the yellow tape, brandishing those words against the sickly yellow parking lot light: _Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here._

The ground cracked within the taped-out circle as the helicopter rose, only to hover in midair barely one hundred feet up. Little by little by little, the crack began to spread, and I heard both a rumble and a growl from the evening around us. As light drained from the sky, I became aware of Mosquito, Marpesia, and Agent Harmony, all in position around us, and all aiming something in toward the center of the circle: Harmony and Marpesia both held steady .45s, while Mosquito, a good distance off directly in front of us, had one of his snipers at the ready.

"Um," Gary murmured, breaking the hush of nothing but wind. "So… Eric Cartman?" he guessed, pointing sheepishly at the Coon.

The Coon tensed, and shot me an awful glare.

"No reason to get uptight," I grumbled. "We need him. Wilcox and Henrietta know."

"So? That doesn't mean you go blabbin' who we are to Missionary Gary, here."

"Elder Harrison," Gary corrected under his breath.

"The hell ever."

"We did more or less agree to tell him," I reminded the Coon, who snorted. "Look, we've all got mixed feelings, but maybe fill us in on what this circle is, if you can."

"Oh, right." A faster draw than he'd been in quite some time, the Coon grabbed out his own .45 and cocked it in the direction of the stretching crack in the spot where the helicopter had been. "It's fuckin' bullshit is what it is."

Karen withdrew another gun from her purse. Gary looked ready to throw up. He paled, and his eyebrows knit in concern as he stared at the menacing spot. "Can… you elaborate a little more?" he requested. "I'm sorry to keep asking, I'm just so confused, and you say you need me, and I'm really concerned about everyone just getting lifted in that thing," he babbled, pointing up at the helicopter, "and I—who's this 'they' you keep mentioning, and—"

I nudged my sister as I aimed my own pistol on the widening crack. Pavement began to sink inward, as if getting sucked into a slow-pressure vacuum.

"Right after TupperWear and Endgame went in," the Coon began, "these assholes show up, and I'm pretty sure there's somethin' coming outta that crack pretty soon. Some Golem guy in the helicopter said something about an opening."

"Who is _they?!"_ Gary insisted.

"Shortish version," Karen began to explain. "These guys, this 'they,' Gary, they're from… well, they're from Hell…"

"They're _what?!"_ Eyes wide as saucers, Gary gulped for breath.

From seemingly everywhere in the lot, I heard a girl's voice cry out, "Gary!"

Amid the whipping of the helicopter blades and the faint echoes of the commotion from inside the store, the scream rang through the air, piercing the sky in terror, and for that instant, I knew precisely where the real world and what lay Between divided.

Human panic fueled Hell. Whatever it was that they were 'building,' whatever it was that Damien was soon to reveal to the town as his grand project, he was sure to feed off of the panic of the entire town. There must have been some kind of radius around the volcano—an area that Damien and his followers were planning to use as the tether between Earth and Hell.

"Amanda?!"

No one is more panicked than when loved ones are at risk. Come to think of it, nothing gets people bargaining more. Deals with the Devil are being struck left and right, and the more power is fed to him, I'd imagine, the easier it becomes to unleash the Wolf, Leopard and Lion, who prey on human emotion.

And up from the circle came the very head of that whole damned pride: a Lion, rivaling the Leopard in size and the She-Wolf in all her avarice, crawled up from the pit at the center of the taped-out circle. Riding on its head, and singing some God-awful refrain of the same song I remembered from the art opening at the Tenth Circle, was the one and only General Disarray. In the rotting, repulsive flesh.

In his arms struggled Amanda Harrison, Gary's youngest sibling, her red-brown hair in a braid that had then been wound around her neck, resembling a rope.

"AMANDA!" Gary cried out again, too stunned to move.

"Hold your fire!" I cautioned my team.

_"Abandon hope if you enter here, What's the worst that could happen if the slate's all clear?"_ Disarray sang out into the night. The Lion he rode stepped lethargically over the yellow tape and its slim stansions. "Oh, a full party tonight," he commented, sneering down at us. "And look, Amanda, even your brother came."

"You let go of her!" Gary warned.

Disarray scoffed. "What're you gonna do if I don't? Harshly scold me?" He let out a laugh, at the same moment a black-clad figure moved behind him.

Damien.

Disarray was dressed rather similarly: both men wore black turtlenecks and pants, but while Damien kept himself simple and seemingly reserved, Disarray had donned a muted red cloak, and wore a cuff of shining metal around his neck, echoing the armor both he and Professor Chaos once wore. A chain connected the cuff to the cloak, and around Disarray's waist was tied a length of rope, which appeared charred on the ends. My own neck hurt just looking from it to the way he'd positioned Amanda's hair.

"Easy, easy," Damien cautioned his accomplice. "Can't hold all the events at once. Do you want to move up, or need I remind you that I am still the one giving orders?"

Disarray scrutinized the young devil, but relented, and said nothing else.

Oh, so he was trying to call shots in Hell. Interesting… but unfortunate, for everyone involved.

"Damien." I fixed my focus on him as I spoke, and his deep red eyes glowered back at me, inviting me to speak. Daring me to speak. Provoking me to say just one thing that he might be able to spit back in my face. "You fucking coward."

"Not one for pleasantries, are you, Mysterion?" Damien mocked me.

"Shut up. Where's Red?"

He didn't even laugh at me about it. All he did was, very straightforwardly, say the words, "You have the ticket, don't you? I need Miss Rebecca right now. No bargains. You can have her back if you can find her."

"We know where you're setting up shop, asshole," the Coon sneered. "Tell Tenorman to get his crazy Ginger ass out here. I got some shit to say to him. I got some shit to say to you, too."

Now Damien grinned. He brushed past the other two, causing Amanda to let out a scream. Disarray cupped a hand over her mouth, muffling the sound. With hardly a sound, Damien jumped to the ground, patted the Lion's leg twice, placating the enormous predatory cat, and said, "There will be time for your words soon enough. We'll hear you out, brother, just give it time."

"Kay, that's really creepy actually hearin' you say that," the Coon admitted. Cocking his pistol, he added, "Don't suppose this'd do anythin' to you."

"You are certainly welcome to try. Though I'm sure I have much more interesting answers for you than your own dear mother would be willing to divulge." The Coon froze, and I saw him hesitate. "If you want answers, you won't shoot."

"I'll shoot anyway if you keep pissin' me off," the Coon growled. "Leave my mother out of it."

"She's a lovely woman, really. And very, _very_ proud of you."

Damien flashed another grin. "Just like little Rebecca is of you, Mysterion," he just had to add. I held my ground, much as I wanted to beat him into the following year. "This entire town places every bit of their pride in you and your League. They adore you. They'd follow you anywhere, wouldn't they? Even right down to Hell."

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" I snarled.

"I'm building a dream, boys." His selective vocabulary was wearing me out, and at the same time inciting me to settle the whole fucking score. I just wanted all of the facts first. I wasn't going to go headlong into a fight when we could be potentially putting the town at risk. That pit the Lion had crawled out of was bothering me… we'd have to shut that thing off somehow. Not to mention get back those civilians, hardly even potential GSM members, out of that helicopter before Damien could put them to work, which seemed the inevitable outcome. "This was the best place to do so. My father's going to love it."

"Why here?" I demanded. "Why this town?"

Damien merely smirked. He seemed incapable of doing little else but to mock me. He was so fucking pleased with himself. "It is ideal," was his answer. "Your kind have made it so."

"My kind?" I spat back.

"Surely you've learned by now that you aren't the only one who came from the shadows," said the young devil. He approached with tinctured footsteps. The smell of sulfur spread with every loud whip of the helicopter blades. I half expected the air around us to catch fire and consume the last of our clinging Circle of reality.

"I'm aware," I said as I held my ground. "So I've got a request. It's us you want. Stop fucking with innocent people _and just take us."_

"Who are you volunteering?" Gary hiss-whispered at me.

"Myself. My League. I'm 'volunteering' all of us," I clarified, loud enough for all to hear. "We're who you want? Leave the innocent out of it! Let them go. Human beings don't belong in the Spaces Between—"

"Oh, now, you see, I _would_ let the 'innocent' go, dear boy, I gladly would," said Damien, pointedly, "but I am afraid they are _far_ from 'innocent,' these collected many who have come to my door. This town is a den of sin. Your League is the culmination. The best of the best. You, the final links, the brightest beacons of mortal excellence… oh, you shall be the final act.

"You have been invited!" he shouted, outstretching his arms as the helicopter rose higher into the air above him. "Move past my guardians, Mysterion, and we are waiting. We shall take those of you fit to enter. Abandon hope, abandon the weak, and the Carnival at the end, at the far, vast reaches of your world and ours, will open its welcome doors!"

"Don't you get what you're doing?!" I argued. "You're merging worlds! Humans can't exist in the Spaces Between, you'll destroy _everything._ Heaven, Earth, even Hell! Nothing will remain but the Void if you—"

"All the more reason to build. Squatter's rights, boy. The Void is ours."

That announced, a parcel fell into his hands. Damien tossed the parcel, wrapped in what looked like a red paper bag with black twine resembling thorns, down at the Coon's feet. "DOWN!" the Coon shouted, his tone clearly indicating that he suspected a bomb. Karen pulled Gary to one side, and I fell back, pointing my pistol at the Devil's son.

Damien let out a bark of laughter. "You suspect such simple things of me!" he called out. "Hell doesn't play by human rules, boys, not anymore. All you'll find in that parcel are the tickets the rest of you will be needing to cross our fine iron gates. Bring a friend. See what happens."

"Stop running _away!"_ I shouted.

Red eyes glared at me. I blinked. And then Damien was gone. The helicopter still hovered overhead, but Damien himself was nowhere in view. Its red, circular emblem the last thing I saw, the vehicle then took off in the direction of the volcano.

"Shit," I muttered to myself.

No time to really gather thoughts, yet, either. Next thing I knew, Disarray shouted out, "Hey, Shadow League! Catch!"

His words were echoed by another scream from Amanda Harrison. Gary's eyes had hardly moved from her once, and now they widened in horror as Disarray cast her off of the Lion's back. Gary made a run for her, as did the rest of us close enough to do so.

Between the four of us—myself, Karen, Gary, and, yes, even the Coon—Amanda's fall was broken, and as soon as we got her on her own two trembling feet, Gary un-wound her braid from around her neck, and hugged her, turning his back on the beast. I could feel the Lion's hot breath on us.

I looked up at Disarray, who casually leaned into the Lion's mane as if it were a large pillow. He beamed his twisted, burned smirk down at us, and said, "Well played, well played! You're getting the hang of the game."

"I still don't understand how this can be a 'game' to you," I spat at our revived nemesis.

"Life's a game, Mysterion," Disarray lisped against his lasting wounds from R'lyeh. "Writes its own rules. All you guys are rule-breakers. It's pretty fucking fun when you think about it. Up until now, we all won the same thing at the end: one-way ticket up," he continued, pointing to the sky, "or down." He yet again pointed accordingly. "Most of us end up… you know. Down.

"But who knew there were bonus rounds?" he sneered. "If I had any idea I could get ahead in the afterlife, I'd've gone all the way down a long time ago."

"What did you do?" the Coon demanded.

"Gotta go down before you can move up," Disarray laughed. "Chaos coulda had it, too. Even you, you little rat. You've got some good potential. Most of you do. Why just settle for up or down when you could be everywhere? Own everything? Heaven and Hell and Earth couldn't exist without all these Goddamn rules, till now.

"But the Between… oh, that shit can last way outta reach of universal laws. I really like that. And if we merge… we've got everything." He stood, yanking back on the Lion's mane triumphantly. "Look at me now, boys!" Disarray yowled. "Death was all I could've asked for! I've got Hell within reach, I've got Earth within reach, and you know how? Because I've seen it. I've been Between. I know where to build and how to build.

"So just see if you can catch me."

Not another word—the Lion took off, lumbering back, out of the parking lot and following the path the helicopter had taken. Toward the mountains, toward the mines, toward the Carnival.

"Build _what?!"_ the Coon shouted, firing four times after the dead boy and his beast.

The Coon's shots were echoed by Harmony and Marpesia's pistols, as well as one explosive shock from Mosquito's stun-sniper. No damage was inflicted, and we were graced with nothing resembling a response. "I'm goin' after that asshole!" the Coon announced, breaking into a run.

"Guys, move out after the Coon," I advised the others. "Be on standby for other orders."

"We're on it," Mosquito responded.

Switching thoughts, I asked, "Toolshed, what's your situation?"

A moment passed, during which I helped my sister steady the Harrison siblings as they exchanged fast-paced words in concern for each other's safety, before I heard Toolshed respond, "Kinda fucked up, but what's new?"

"The four of you guys good against that thing in there?" I checked. "We've got the Lion out here, and some major shit going down."

"We've got this guy," TupperWear responded for that group of four. "You guys take care of that Lion."

"Careful," I cautioned. "Check in when you guys're done, we'll do the same."

I was given confirmation from the four inside, then made one last check-in, with Red Serge and Iron Maiden back at the base. They were keeping surveillance as best they could, and had Bebe on hand keeping up with research. "Delphi's got a copy of the _Book of the Inferno, _just in case," Red Serge informed me. "Those cats are the last things standing between you guys and those nine versions of Hell. Once you beat 'em, who knows what'll happen anywhere, so we're gonna try to stay a step ahead."

Nine versions of Hell. And there were already circles breaking between that and the living world.

Maybe there was no difference at all between true Hell and a nightmare. We were plenty tangled in both for a divide to be imperceptible. And Gary Harrison, for one, had noticed. The fear in his eyes had begun to fade, giving way to a full expression much more stern and focused than I had ever seen that young man display.

I knew exactly where he was coming from. He had not let go of his little sister, who still shivered with recoil from what I could only imagine to be several times worse than anything she had ever personally been through before. I sure as hell knew what that kind of protectiveness was like.

"Amanda," Karen was consoling the younger sibling, "are you all right? Is there anything we can do?"

Barely gathering herself, Amanda responded, in a much smaller voice than I'd ever heard the usually energetic girl use, "I never want to see that again. I never want to see that again."

"What did you see?" Gary prompted, patting back her hair.

"Nothing. It was terrible."

"But—"

"I saw _nothing,_ Gary," Amanda insisted. "I saw what _nothing_ looks like! It's like being asleep, and dreaming about way too much all at once, until there's absolutely nothing you can see in among all the colors clashing. I thought it was the white light of Heaven, Gary, but it wasn't. It wasn't." She broke down sobbing, then cried, "I'm not supposed to be afraid of something so bright!"

"It's okay," Gary managed, in response to her, keeping his voice calm. "I've seen it, too."

I started, at the mention of that, and asked for clarity, "What? Gary, you mentioned having strange dreams lately…" And hadn't I heard Stan mention that his 'nightmares' were more accurately described as feelings more than images, as well?

And my own worst nightmare was a quivering shadow.

My own shadow had remained unmoving since the night Red disappeared, but I had the feeling I needed to take clear stock in the clashing of this 'brightness' Amanda had mentioned, and the shadow quite literally creeping out from my past.

"I don't know what to make of them," Gary explained. "I don't know what to make of any of this right now." He glared daggers at me. "All of a sudden, I just happen to learn that the Shadow League hero I've been helping out since I started working here has been Stan Marsh all along, and you, and Cartman, and Karen and Kyle and who knows who else are all a part of it, and…"

"I know it's a lot to keep up with," I said, "and I'm sorry… I promise, we'll lay everything out for you as soon as we can."

Gary took in a deep breath, and kept his hold on his sister. "Listen, Kenny—I mean… I… sorry. Mysterion—"

Amanda lifted her head, and asked in a whisper, into Gary's shoulder, "Kenny?"

Karen smiled, and responded, "Yeah."

"So are you…?" Amanda began, keeping her eyes momentarily on Karen. My sister mouthed _yes,_ then turned her attention back to me as Gary let out more of his thoughts.

"Mysterion, if you need my help, if your League needs my help, then, gosh, I'll try to do what I can," Gary said, "but I don't know what's going on. These—these things are all from… f-from Hell, and they took my co-workers, and… and just how the heck am I supposed to help, Mysterion?! How?!"

"Maybe 'support' is a better word," I clarified. "Can we have your support, Gary? Can we trust you to keep our identities secret?"

"You bet you can." He let out a sigh, then asked, "Do you need my, uh… support now? Or can I get Amanda home?"

I glanced off in the direction the Lion had gone. That needed my attention now more than anything. Disarray had specifically mentioned the Heaven, Earth and Hell connection. If we were going to have any kind of connection between all three, I had to understand more about the former. We needed support from the pious to defeat the damned. That just seemed like the most logical form of defense we had—it was the best way to keep the Circles unbroken, while those of us in the League, those of us who had quirks or ancestry that separated us from the rest of humanity, started up the attack to keep the Spaces Between where they needed to be.

"You can go home," I said. "But your family's under League surveillance and protection, now. We'll find you when we need you."

"I still don't get what's happening…"

_"Gary."_ I lowered my voice to a harsher growl, causing him to snap to attention. "You are in danger, and we are going to help you. In return, we just ask for your support, and we might have a couple of questions for you. We haven't figured out the full extent of their objectives, but there are beings from Hell roaming the Earth right now, and they've got targets in this town. I'm not surprised that they're after the more devout people in South Park, either."

"This is terrible," Gary muttered. "I just spent two years spreading the Good Word and now—"

"So keep up your good work," Karen urged him. "It's all right, you haven't done anything wrong. This isn't about who's right and who's wrong in the spiritual world, but what's important is that Hell is attacking Earth, and that we are going to do all in our combined power to stop them. I'll explain a little more if I can." To me, she added, "I'll bring them home. I'm armed. You should go; this mission needs Mysterion."

I nodded, but I wasn't ready to leave my sister, off-duty, alone with a mission. It wasn't that I didn't trust her… I didn't trust anyone we were up against. Red had been dragged to the Spaces Between; I wasn't losing Karen, too. That pit in the parking lot was just the beginning: that was the first point of contact between Earth and Hell.

That pit led to somewhere Between.

And Stan had pointed it out himself: Karen was an outlier herself. She hadn't grown up in South Park, she was effectively 'pure' of having as long a history against odd phenomena, much more so than the rest of us. Damien was ripping apart families and targeting me, as well as the family Karen was volunteering to protect on her own.

She wasn't doing this alone.

"Coon," I said into the wire. "Harmony. Stay on the Lion, I'm going to catch up. Mosquito, Marpesia, fall back. I want you with Karen, Gary and Amanda."

"Kenny—" Karen tried.

I shook my head. "I'm not taking any risks." Her shoulders stiffened, then shook, but Karen nodded in understanding. "We need you, sis. God knows I need you," I added, pulling her in for a hug. Karen nodded against me again, then stepped back, and patted my arms reassuringly.

"We'll be okay," Karen assured me. She picked up the red-wrapped parcel that Damien had tossed at the Coon, and tucked it under her arm. It was probably safest with her, assuming that it contained exactly what Damien had announced. If there were enough of those strange tickets for all of us now, then there was no doubt that the Carnival really was waiting for us. "Don't worry, though. I'm not letting you head to that Carnival without me."

We waited a moment more, until I heard confirmation that Marpesia and Mosquito were close in range, and had visual contact on Karen and the Harrison siblings. Karen and I exchanged words of good luck to one another, and as I left, I heard Amanda ask, "Karen, are you really?"

"Yeah," my sister responded softly. "So don't worry, Amanda. A Guardian Angel sticks to her word, and I'm going to keep you and your family safe."

"Thank you," Amanda whispered.

"See you soon," Karen promised me.

"Keep me updated, sis," I asked. "See you soon."

We parted ways, and I moved through the night, past the large building that was serving as the battleground between half of my team and the Leopard, the second beast in charge of greeting the damned as they entered Hell; on I went, farther past the damaged parking lot, and into a dense thicket of trees and underbrush, every footstep carrying me closer to the Lion, General Disarray, and the Carnival that was stationed between the reality I wanted to preserve, and the nightmare that Hell had been building upon for longer than we had been aware.

There had been a breach. With all of my current doubts, that was one certainty. Damien had been watching us—that was speculation, but he was confirming the idea with every word he spoke to me. He had tabs on me, on Cartman, on everyone in the League. He knew that we were important to our hometown, and he knew who to taunt when it came to our worst nightmares. This operation must have been years in the making; Tenorman's Carnival-obsessed touch had spurred Damien's plans onward, and the dead, scheming General Disarray was only stirring the pot to an even more provoking degree.

Disarray had passed through the Spaces Between before; Damien and his followers had now broken through. We didn't have much time before he opened those Carnival gates to the public and let Hell seep through. He could only 'build' for so long… but at least there was a chance that we could still tear them down.

That night, however, had other plans. And the 'game' had only just begun, whether or not we wanted to play.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park _is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Hiya! So, so sorry about the additional week's delay on this chapter… several things just kept throwing monkey wrenches into the plan to get this up in a timely fashion (illness and the schedule from hell being the main problems, argh). We still plan to move this story steadily along, though, and will hopefully have another chapter up within the next week or so~! ^^ We're moving into the parts that we have more of a buffer for (we have so much of the ending already written, haha…), and we're excited to move into the arc that finally leads into the Carnival. :3

Many, many thanks for reading! Hope you're enjoying the story, we're having fun writing it! I'm not sure of a speculative posting date for the next chapter, but we'll **see you very soon, ** please check my profile within the next week for a projected posting time for chapters 14 and 15! :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

Also—We were also both quite busy last month writing for the South Park Reverse Mini Bang, which are now up… check out the site at for all of the art and ficlets if you're interested ^^

– – –


	14. Ep 14: The Pit Where Chaos Dwells

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|**

– – –

"_Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness._

_There I saw a woman… dressed in purple and scarlet…_

_She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things _

_and the filth of her adulteries._

_The name written on her forehead was a mystery:  
Babylon the Great_

_The Mother of Prostitutes_

_And of the Abominations of the Earth."_

—_Revelation 17:3-5_

– – –

_Stan_

I'm used to following through on League mission work basically by trusting my best judgment. When intuition not only fails but is most likely being tampered with, however, things get tricky. As we had learned on the night the Wolf had shown up with yet another throng of GSM Golems, quick thinking in the moment was a bit more reliable than trying to plan anything out. That was just the problem with Hell: all nightmares, all surprises, no exceptions.

As much as I wanted to try to move the fight we'd found ourselves a part of _outside,_ so as not to utterly devastate the inside of the Hope Depot, I couldn't exactly say that I personally could have been in any better place to take charge against the opposition. I knew that store inside and out.

Of course, that fucking Leopard was doing a damn good job at turning the store inside-out _completely,_ but I was lucky to not be alone in there. After Kenny had left with his sister and Gary (God, we had a lot of explaining ahead of us, for that poor guy), TupperWear and Kite picked up the chain that had gone slack around the Leopard's neck, and I got in two good swings at its skull—probably three times the size of that on a normal leopard—before Endgame rounded out our segment of the team.

The Leopard broke from its bonds upon his arrival and leapt forward. Unflinching, as usual, Endgame hurled Kite's glider over the Leopard and sidestepped before he could be knocked down. Kite called out a rushed, "Thanks!" and darted after the glider, while the Leopard skidded into an aisle of glass windows and doors on display. It knocked down several of them, and, seizing the opportunity, TupperWear hurled his shield in the beast's direction.

The shield cut up into the Leopard's lower jaw, causing it to fall back further into the row of glass doors, thus creating a domino effect. Shattering glass echoed across the store's walls, and just as Endgame was joining up with me and TupperWear and a quick exchange of our acknowledgement of one another's fast thinking, I noticed Kite, glider now secured in place on his back, scaling the side of an aisle display directly parallel to the mess of glass.

"Might want to stand back!" he called down toward us, as soon as he'd made it to the top of the aisle.

Up went the fallen Leopard's head at the sound of the shout, but he'd only just fixed his gleaming eyes at the Human Kite before the latter raised his bandaged arms (getting me to cringe somewhat, in hopes that he wouldn't push himself too far). Glass rose around the beast at Kite's command, cycloned around him once, and then came back down, cutting from all directions into the Leopard's flesh.

It let out an anguished yowl and shot to its feet. Stunned and slightly wounded, it barrelled toward us, acting out its rage at more easily reachable targets.

"Split up, now!" I shouted to the others.

I sprinted around to my left, while Endgame took to the right. TupperWear, however, gathered up the chain again, from the spool which Kite and I had earlier rolled down from a display not far off, and, with a length in each hand, rushed directly underneath the giant cat. Taking the chain with him, he managed to catch a knot of it around one of the Leopard's hind legs, and pulled.

The cat stumbled, and its head, following through TupperWear's motion with heavy whiplash, smacked into the shining tiled floor. I heard something crack, which, from all I could tell, was promising on our part. "Nice one, guys!" I called out to both Kite and TupperWear for their fast and precise actions.

"We've gotta kill this thing, quick, though," TupperWear replied. "Already tore this place up enough as it is."

"Now's the time to hit it," said the Human Kite. "Toolshed, wanna find me an axe or something? Straight shot to the head might do it."

"I like the way you think," I complimented him, mostly via wire, as I scoured the shelves for something that would do the trick.

While it was true that we were at no shortage of weapons to use against this particular opponent, TupperWear was right: we had to finish it off fast. South Park has seen more than enough destruction… or, such has been the experience throughout my lifetime. Then again, if we were indeed the ones attracting the opposition—well, all the more reason, I guess, for us to try to keep destruction during this particular threat to a minimum.

The _really_ shitty thing was the thought that, even if we did manage to stop the Carnival and everyone involved, that still wouldn't be the end. I mean, what if we couldn't get out? It was no coincidence that so many of us had ended up forming the Shadow League. As much as I wanted to have my time off from it, someday, it seemed increasingly likely that more—like Damien, like the Cult of Cthulhu, and so on—would find and challenge us.

But I had more immediate things to think about.

Such as which among a row of axes would best suit my partner's request.

I went with the heaviest one that I could physically handle, and ripped off its blade guard with nothing but my awl as I ran it back over to where Kite was still stationed at the top of an aisle display.

On the ground, TupperWear and Endgame had continued winding the Leopard up in chains. In fact, given what route they'd taken, I was almost surprised that the beast was still on its feet: while TupperWear wound the chains from a selection of three spools around the wounds already inflicted upon the Leopard by the shattered glass, Endgame was soldering the chains to the spot, melting them into the large cat's flesh with a quick laser flash here and there.

The cat let out a nearly human scream as the chains melted against a shard of glass protruding from the side of its ribcage, and I tried not to cringe as I hollered up, "Catch!"

Kite snapped to even closer attention, and though he didn't look at me, I knew he was ready. His focus was on his target spot—the back of the Leopard's skull, inches above an area on the nape of its neck at which TupperWear had crossed the chains into a black and silver _X._ I hurled the axe skyward at a diagonal at the same time Kite kicked off, glider extended. With no breeze to catch, the glider simply slowed his rate of descent, which was perfect for allowing him to land precisely above the _X_ after catching his requested weapon.

Seconds later, the axe was buried deep into the Leopard's skull. With a loud crack, Kite brought the new blade down upon the great cat, and he leapt from its back as the beast fell to the ground. We remained on our guard for two long minutes until we came to the consensus that the beast was not getting back up.

"Oh, joy," Kite said, glancing around the ruined store. "Cleanup's gonna be a bitch."

"Can't you just, like, clean up with your brain or whatever?" Endgame wondered.

Kite rolled his eyes. "Not how it works, dude. I'm not going to exhaust myself by playing Mary fucking Poppins, all right?"

"But you _could._ All I'm saying." Endgame shrugged.

"Yeah, Craig," was Kite's flat response, "let me just reduce this quirk that requires all the mental stability in the world to a little bit of cleanup."

"Dude, you could."

_"No._ And _now_ we're off the subject, and we have a giant fucking carcass to take care of, _and_ an entire Home Depot to re-organize."

"Make the cops do it," Endgame suggested.

"Oh, right," TupperWear cut in, "because Yates has been _such_ a big help." To me and Kite, he added, "Yates went with the Carnival."

"Well, fuck," I answered for both of us.

"No shit. But on the subject, guys," he continued, "if we can get back to this place later, I think that's best. We're in three groups right now, we should team back up. I can head over to back up Marpesia and them if the rest of y—"

Endgame cut him off with an obvious, but muffled, laugh.

"What?" TupperWear wanted to know.

_"I'll go check on Marpesia,"_ Endgame mocked him. "Just make up with her already."

Behind his helmet, I could clearly make out Token's expression of instant shock. "That's not what I meant," he tried.

"Bullshit."

"Well—"

"What happened with you guys, anyway?" I wondered.

"We're off the subject again," TupperWear muttered.

"It's cool," said Endgame. "You go win over your lady, we'll go fight off the Devil."

"I hate you."

_"Personal matters aside,"_ Kite cut in, giving most of his glare to Endgame, "can we at least come up with a plan? First of all, I agree, we should team back up with the others as soon as we can, but what do we do in here?"

TupperWear cast a look over at the Leopard, and cringed somewhat. "Actually, I am pretty worried about that," he admitted.

"About what?" asked Kite.

"Well, when the Wolf went down, she disappeared."

"Yeah?"

"…So why isn't this thing disappearing?"

He just had to ask.

There were tools of all varieties, from all shelves, strooned along the floor. I backed up until my heel hit a crowbar, which I then squatted to pick up and slide into my belt, just in case. Another step back, and I came upon a sledgehammer. Perfect. And I still had plenty of ammo in the drill guns that Gary had had stocked under the counter. With the sledgehammer in my right hand, I grabbed out one drill gun with my left, and aimed it forward at the Leopard.

"Good call," I noted. "That thing's still alive."

"There's an _axe in it's brain,"_ Kite pointed out, through clenched teeth. "Maybe it's just taking a long time to—"

Nope.

A low growl came from the supposedly dead beast, and its front paws moved. Slowly, very slowly, the Leopard picked itself up, and its terrible eyes fixed on all four of us at once.

"Shoot it," TupperWear encouraged me.

"Not gonna waste my ammo on a long-distance shot," I said, "sorry. This'll slow it down, but we need more of a plan…"

And, luckily, one just happened to come our way when I heard my extended wire communication system go live.

"Courtesy call, guys," I heard Mosquito quip into the wire. "What's the deal with the Leopard?"

"Motherfucker won't stay down," Kite grumbled.

"According to Red Serge's tracking, you're still inside," the League co-leader noted. "Look, he and Iron Maiden have control over the Harrison thing for now, but I gotta say, Gary's already helped more than I was even expecting."

"Why, what happened?" I had to know.

"Fill you in later. Long story short—" (when Mosquito spoke the words, Kite groaned and grabbed at the brim of his bomber cap; Kyle's never been too awful fond of that phrase, I'll admit) "me and the girls are splitting up for backup duty. I'm heading your way now."

"Can you make a call, dude?" TupperWear requested. "This thing's indestructible."

Mosquito was silent for a moment, then decided, "So we send it back and regroup."

"Send it back how?" I wondered.

"TupperWear. Endgame. Remember that pit outside? Push it there. Get it outside, and even if we just trap it in that pit, we should be able to get something done."

"On it," said TupperWear. He nodded to the rest of us, and said, "Follow me."

TupperWear led the way out, taking fast strides. Endgame followed at a similar pace, but Kite and I slowed ourselves to encourage the least (additionally) destructive exit for the Leopard to take. I knew that my partner was holding his breath, and I admit that I could feel very little beyond my own nervous and unsynchronized heartbeat and breathing. An opponent that did not die after incurring so many generally fatal injuries? Not at the top of my list of things that made me feel too confident in my own abilities.

Unlike the Old Ones, though, one thing we had going for us was the knowledge that this Leopard, though ancient, was not necessarily Immortal. Then again, if General Disarray—or his soul or whatever—was sticking around after death, these three beasts probably wouldn't completely vanish from existence after we were through with them. They were, however, a challenge that Damien had set up for us; that much was clear. We _could _bring the beast down… it was just a question of how long it would take.

Kite held his right hand out to the side, empty, in case he needed to make a quick grab for one resource or another to use as a weapon. "I'm going to take one shot once we get to the door," I told him. "When I do, run."

"Just enough to provoke it, right?" he guessed.

"Yeah. If we're driving it down a pit, I want to try to piss it off so it just gets there on its own."

"Fair deal."

We were now backed up close enough to the front door to have activated the automated sliding glass panels. A breeze hit our backs from outside, and I took the shot: one drill bit from the altered weapon in my left hand hit the Leopard directly in its right eye. Kite took right off running, and I did the same. The now enraged Leopard yowled and bolted after us.

The two of us split to either side once we were out the doors, and it was a damn good thing we did, since the moment the Leopard burst through—dragging the chain spools with it and dropping bits of glass as it ran—it bucked back upon incurring another, much stronger shot from across the parking lot. An awful roar sounded from the enormous cat as it tripped to the pavement, and another shot hit it on the snout. The combination of the shots and the fall shattered one of the cat's teeth, and shook another nearly loose.

Bleeding from the mouth, the Leopard shook itself, but was shaking on its feet. The axe was still lodged into the back of its skull. Hopefully that, having hit a nerve, would slow it down enough for the pit to completely do it in.

From across the parking lot, switching out his sniper for both pistols, walked Mosquito, who called out, "I think we've got it now that we're out here, guys! But holy shit, it's not down after all _that?"_

"Right?" I called back. "So what's the plan?"

The Leopard took a few steps closer to us, and Mosquito's immediate response was to shoot it again, three times in the chest. The beast went down shaking, and lay still. While not yet done in, Mosquito had at least bought a bit of time.

He looked the Leopard over, then surveyed the area, taking stock of where he could position all five of us for the best final strike. He'd always had a keen eye for placing the team exactly where we needed to be in order to finish a job, so I had complete faith in any plan he'd devise for the present situation. "You've got a sledgehammer on you—nice," he noticed. "There's some weak pavement over there," he pointed toward an area near the enormous pit he'd mentioned (and which I was noticing now for the first time… particularly the awful yellow tape job, and the faint smoke that began to rise out of it). "Cut up as much as you can, and Kite, be on standby to use that shit to cover the pit back up once we toss the Leopard down. That's the only weak point in the Circles right now, so we're good once we hole it up, I think.

"Once you've got that going, Toolshed, you're with me and Endgame. Us three are just gonna shoot the living fuck out of this thing. TupperWear, stand by with that shield and shove the Leopard as far to the edge of the pit so we can shoot it down in. Endgame, you melt the pavement together again once Kite's got it covered. We good, guys?"

We each gave our varied _'got it'_ responses, and I made for the area Mosquito had pointed out. Close to the gaping, smoking pit, there was indeed an already-weakened, cracking patch of pavement. I switched out my drill gun for the crowbar I'd picked up, and tossed it to the Human Kite, who put the tool to use as my backup: the ground was weak enough that I could jab my awl into a crack, shake the pavement loose with a single hit from the sledgehammer, and Kite could loosen up the tarmac further with a quick shove of the crowbar.

While the other three continued to weaken the Leopard, Kite and I had scrounged up enough of the pavement in a couple short, panicked minutes that would allow us to seal the pit back up, going with Mosquito's plan.

"Now, guys, let's get rid of this thing!" the League co-leader shouted out. "Endgame, Toolshed, need your bullets, or whatever you've got! Aim for the neck!"

On Mosquito's signal, I fired at the same time he did, directly into the Leopard's exposed white neck. While his bullets and my drill bits forced the Leopard back, Endgame fired a volley before he prepped himself on standby for a final blast once we had the beast poised over the pit, and the Human Kite held a chunk of the ruined pavement at the ready in midair for an additional strike.

The beast lowered its head to avoid further shots to its neck, but as it did, its hind right leg sank back into the pit. The enormous cat let out a yowl and dug its claws into the tar of the parking lot, cracking the weakened ground further beyond repair.

"TupperWear!" Mosquito called out to the member of our team that was stationed closest to the mouth of the pit. "Drive it down! Endgame, Kite, stand by."

TupperWear was after the Leopard in a flash—he took up his shield, crouched as he ran for the creature's head, then raised up the sharpened metal plate and brought it down on the large cat's snout. Mosquito called out for Kite to make his own move, and immediately Kite hurled the mass of tar he'd collected at the Leopard's right front leg. When the hit caused the beast to let go of its grip, TupperWear brought his shield down again, this time on the cat's left front paw.

The creature let out one more yowl, and let go.

I drew in a breath, ready to let out a sigh of relief for finally ridding ourselves of the creature, but I choked it back: as it fell into the pit, the Leopard opened its jaw and sank its teeth into TupperWear's right leg. Nothing registered after that.

Both fell into the pit.

"FUCK!" came from just about all of us.

"Token!" Endgame and Mosquito both broke persona at once, and rushed to the edge of the pit.

I saw Kite's eyes flare open wide behind his goggles, and he called out to the other two, "Stand back!" He bolted for the edge of the pit, and thrust his right arm out to one side, then let his hand shoot straight up in the air.

"Kyle, what're you doing?!" I shouted.

"Holding my fucking breath," was his response. "This better work."

Up into the air, following his arm's motions, went the fallen yellow police line tape. It snaked high up, about three feet above the tips of Kite's fingers, and then shot down into the pit when Kite thrust his flattened hand downward, pointing his index and middle fingers directly after our fallen teammate.

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck!"_ Clyde repeated. "Dude, can you find him? If you can't read people, how—"

Kite shushed him, and I ran to the others. "I think the best we can do right now is re-load," I said to Clyde, who was barely keeping himself focused in mission mode.

"I made the call…" he whispered.

"Re-load!" I urged him.

"I said 'drive it down…'"

"SHUT UP!" Kite commanded.

The tape caught.

"Toolshed, Mosquito, you guys on either side of the pit, right now," Kite ordered. "Endgame, you and me are gonna just fucking _pull!"_

He caught onto the tape, and tossed a part of it back toward Endgame. I watched Mosquito reload his .45, then gave him an encouraging nod as he and I took our places as instructed, ready to fire at the Leopard should Kite have fished out more than one target accidentally. Endgame assumed his own position without hesitation, and the two hauled the strong yellow tape back, hand over hand, inch after cautionary inch…

My focus wandered from the seemingly unending chasm to the moving yellow tape, and its string of repeating words:

_ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE._

I kept a firm grip on my drill gun, checked in once with Mosquito, and set my focus on the dark pit yet again. Mere moments later, Kite and Endgame made the final pull, bringing up TupperWear with them. "Oh, holy shit," I heard Endgame say under his breath. I held my position, but took a step back, not wanting to be the next one to go over the edge. Mosquito shifted his own attention to the other three, while the two on the tape checked in with TupperWear.

After he uttered a, "Thanks," he let out an awful, painful moan. Which did not bode well. TupperWear was at the head of our defense, always had been. He didn't mind taking heavy hits; in fact, he'd designed his lightweight armor for easy mobility and high resistance. He was the second most impenetrable of the team after Iron Maiden. Nothing cut through the armor that he had spent around half of his total life thus far perfecting.

Nothing except one enormous incisor from the Leopard's ancient set of sharp teeth. One fang, no doubt dislodged from TupperWear's repeated hits to the Leopard's upper jaw, had come loose from the beast and was now lodged straight through our teammate's right knee. Blood dripped from the root and tip—the former, the Leopard's own dark blood; the latter, Token's.

"Oh… shit…" Kite echoed Endgame's statement.

"TOOLSHED, FIRE!"

I snapped to attention at Mosquito's call. Up from the gaping pit leapt our foe yet again, its mouth dripping with blood, its eyes hungry for God only knows what else. I fired at it without restraint, as did Mosquito, but the Leopard's claws found the pavement. It dug its talons in and made another bite for its previous victim, but Endgame was faster.

He ripped off his dark glasses, and Kite ducked down as the strong laser found its target directly between the Leopard's eyes. The cat hollered and bucked, but bit down again.

With absolutely no time to come up with another plan, TupperWear took the continued situation into his own hands, making a rushed but dire decision:

He ripped the fang out of his own leg, rolled to one side to get up onto his left knee, and was then close enough to the Leopard's face to shove the fang into the beast's left eye. "Want it back?!" he shouted at the beast. "Take it!"

"Token, what the _FUCK?!"_ Craig shouted, re-positioning his glasses.

TupperWear wasn't holding up well, but with one deep, forced breath, he heaved the Leopard's head to the side. Mosquito, Endgame and I each went to the ends of our rounds to shoot the Leopard back down into the pit, and as more smoke rose up from the bowels of the earth beneath us, I did see the body begin to dissipate.

All the same, Kite made good on Mosquito's earlier plan and began stacking the loosened bits of pavement along the mouth of the pit. Though shaking, Endgame followed through as well, soldering the tar into place, until we were left with not a pit but one hell of a hacked up parking lot with displaced gravel, a thoroughly fucked up home improvement store behind us, and one severely injured teammate.

"…Fuck…" Clyde repeated as he took off his mask.

Token sat back and yanked off his helmet. He tossed it aside and bent forward to examine his right leg, which was not bleeding profusely, but which clearly was damaged beyond repair from the Leopard's fang. Gritting his teeth, he attempted to stand, then let out a pained shout and sat back down, complaining, "Nope, not gonna happen."

Holding my breath somewhat, I motioned to Clyde, and the two of us knealt, Clyde much more unsteadily than I managed to. "Can you move?" I asked Token.

He let out an angry sigh. "Everything but my right leg," he said. "Fuck. _Fuck,_ I know better'n that…"

"We—we're gonna help, dude, hold on," I assured him.

"Shoulda waited for surgery," Token went on, practically listing. "I just fucked that up. Bad."

Clyde bit his lip till it bled, then spat, _"Shit._ I made a bad call, Token, I'm sorry, dude, I—"

"You didn't make a bad call, dude, _I_ did," said Token. "Don't anyone start doing any blaming. I gotta see the damage."

"What can we do?" I asked. "What's the best thing we can do?"

Token bent forward, and clipped off his armor from the elbows down. With his freed hands, he held his head for a moment, and took a few deep breaths. "Someone get the van, someone else help me get the armor off that leg. Actually, all this. I can't restrict any bloodflow."

"How are you so calm?!" Craig wondered. "Your fucking leg is halfway—"

"If I panic, I'll fuck it up more," Token snapped. I wondered, for a second, if he'd seen worse in his medical training. I doubted it. "Someone just go get the van."

"I'll do it," Kyle offered, and he was running toward the vehicle a second later. I watched after him for a brief moment, since I knew I'd seen him wince. He wasn't cringing just from Token's awful situation, either, I could tell. The burns on his arms were really getting to him, and affecting how well and how long he could hold up on the field. If he wasn't careful, he'd really exhaust himself… not to mention that the burns might never fully heal, if he didn't get the rest he really needed.

Craig yanked off his boots, turned his face away from us as he removed the sunglasses and blinked a few times to transition his sight back to normal, then ditched his vest and weapons on the swift walk back over to where Clyde and I sat with Token. The three of us then helped him over to the nearest towering lamp post in the parking lot, and propped him up so that his back was up against the concrete base.

Token's armor was pretty easy to dislodge; each joint connected with plates that Craig and I started to unhook as fast as we could while still keeping our friend's health and safety in mind. Eventually, we'd worked off all the top armor, and then that around his left leg. Kyle was back with the van as we finished with the armor, and brought out the locking chest that we could use to stash the dark blue plates. Token let out a harsh yelp the likes of which I never wanted to hear from a teammate, and Clyde dove into the back of the van for a first aid kit.

There's always that normal cry that someone emits when hurt—the _ow_ of a burned finger, or the shocked near-scream of an awful hit or fall—and then there's a sort of vocal tremor that comes out when one experiences a break. Or worse.

Craig hadn't even managed to pull off Token's armored shin guard yet, and from the look on his face, he didn't want to. The armor on his right leg was the last we needed to remove. Under his armor, Token was wearing a padded black vest for additional protection from bullets and the like, as well as a sleeveless dark blue shirt, and shorts of a similar hue. His legs were also well-protected, given that he wore padding on his left knee and shin, but the fang had dealt much more damage than he'd been prepared for.

Clyde returned with the first aid kit, and set it down on Token's left for him to search through. "Hey, one more thing," Token requested as he rummaged through the kit for a wad of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic. "Someone call—"

The words were cut short when Craig un-clipped Token's shin guard. He sucked in the rest of his breath and cringed. "Stop," he commanded when he found his voice again.

Craig sat back, and Token shoved the wad of gauze forward. I was closest to grab it, so I did, after taking off my dirtied gloves, and held it at the ready. Kyle, who had done away with most of his Human Kite gear for the time being, shook beside me, and I felt him dig the fingers of his left hand into my back. I checked on him briefly, only to find that he'd gone very, very pale. He was still holding up quite well, though, considering just how much must have been going through his head, both from the current problem and recollections from four years prior. I set my free hand reassuringly over his, and kept breathing.

Token finished taking off his own armor, moving very slowly. He paused only to grab out a pair of latex gloves from the first aid kit, and finished the job once he had the gloves on. "Shit," he breathed out harshly as he peeled off the armor. A piece of it had cut into his knee. "Shit, shit… it's gotta—oh… fuck…"

With a last wince, Token removed the armor. "Stan, give me that," he asked, his voice tight. I held the gauze out, and Token wrapped it quickly around his bleeding knee.

I heard Kyle gulp back what had to have been rising bile, and I understood why. I saw the bone, too.

"Someone call my parents," Token requested.

"Dude, what—" Craig started.

"Just someone call my parents. Look," Token said, still keeping himself together with alarming poise, "at least my parents know what I do with the League. Dad'll know what to do. I'm gonna, um… look, someone call, and just tell them to get here. Might need an ambulance, too."

Craig rose that time to heed the request, and made the call from the back of the van, where he took the time, as well, to change back into his street clothes. When he'd finished the call, he announced that he'd be going off-duty to answer any questions from officials who might end up coming around. As for me, Kyle and Clyde, it was understood that we'd stay on duty and conduct the rest of our evening as representatives of the Shadow League.

I assured Token, once we loaded his armor back into the van, that we'd get the gear back to the base, and fill the others in on what had happened. While we waited for his parents to arrive, the five of us banded together to come up with a false story that we'd tell everyone but the Blacks, and the rest of the League. Well, that four of us could come up with, at least—Clyde was remaining fairly quiet, and mostly just nodded.

It took less than five minutes for Token's parents to show, and by the time the car rolled up, we were in agreement that a mountain lion attack was a believable enough story, since there was no way to call it a traffic accident or anything, given the other bite marks his leg had incurred. Plus, we wouldn't have to stretch the truth that much.

The four of us who were able to stand, at that point, did so, and a second later, Token's mother shot out of the car's passenger side door, her long, teased greying hair trailing behind her like a cloud of dust. "Token!" she cried, falling on her knees in front of him. "Token, honey, what happened? Are you all right?"

"I'll live, Mom, it's okay," he managed in response, looking slightly guilty. "Nothing a bone saw and some alloy can't fix…"

"Alloy?! Token!" She threw her arms around her son's neck, and added, softly, as she cradled his head in one neatly-polished hand, "Thank God you weren't killed, baby, oh, thank God…"

Thank God, all right. And maybe, this time, we really, really should.

Token's father exited the car at that point, and while Craig caught the two up and Kyle once again donned his gear, I pulled Clyde aside and said, "Dude, he's gonna be fine. Why're you taking this personally?"

Clyde was holding onto his already blood-stained Mosquito mask, and his face was so pale I thought he might choke.

"I just keep fucking up," said Clyde, glaring at his mask. "I'm supposed to be Mysterion's right hand in this fucking League, but I keep making bad call after bad call. I didn't see them take Red. We could've taken the Leopard down some other way, without Token using physical force. Who am I gonna fuck over next?"

"You really need to not think like that," I said. "You _are_ a leader, Clyde, don't worry about it. Accidents happen. Put your mask on, dude, we're on duty."

"Like that's going to make a difference, Stan," Clyde snapped. "Dude, Kenny filled me in on that shit you guys talked about with Wilcox, all right? _We're_ the bad guys. Don't you get it? You, me, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Craig, fucking _all_ of us, dude! We bring this shit here. These things catch our scent or whatever and come here looking for it. And the people who aren't… l-like us, or whatever the fuck we are?" He thrust an index finger in Token's direction. "They—get—_FUCKED._ So, _yeah,_ Stan. _Yeah._ I'm going to take this personally. I already almost lost Bebe once. I've lost—I've fucking _lost people,_ Stan, and I don't want it to keep happening. I'm supposed to be a leader, here, so call me greedy for wanting this to stop, but _what if it fucking doesn't?_ I'm not a leader. I'm just some guy with a fucked family history, and so are you, and so's everyone else like us, and now so's Bebe, and so's Red, and so's Token. And it's not—going—to—stop! FUCK."

I knew I couldn't calm him down easily, so I resorted to the first thing I could think of, and grabbed Clyde by the front of his shirt, spun him around, and slammed him into the side of the van. At least that was better than slapping him across the face, which was desperate attempt at getting him to chill out plan B. "Clyde," I said firmly. "You are not a fuck-up. And we are not the bad guys. We're_ not,"_ I insisted when he opened his mouth to retaliate. "There's evil, Clyde, and there's unfortunate. What we've got in our history is _unfortunate._ So you know what you do? You do what Kyle, Craig and Kenny do, man. You _turn it around._ I've gotta keep thinking that, too. I have nightmares. You don't think I'm afraid some shit'll happen because of that? I'm _terrified._ But I'm in this League because I believe we have the resources to end whatever misfortunes there are, and make things better. We're up against Hell, for fuck's sake. You didn't make a bad call. We just had a bad opponent. And here's the thing: Token's gonna live. Red isn't dead, either. We can still save our friends and ourselves if we just focus." I shoved him back against the van again to let that sink in, and added, smacking him upside the back of his head, "Keep your head in the game."

Clyde leaned back against the van and glowered at me, but I saw my stern words start to sink in. I walked around to see what Token's situation was going to become, but noticed out of the corner of my eye that Clyde was slowly fixing his mask back into place.

After allowing myself a moment to check over the newly-sealed patch where the pit was most likely still churning miles beneath us, I gave an apologetic yet official hello to Token's father, then, along with him and Craig, helped Token into the back seat of the Blacks' car, where his mother quickly joined him. She was fretting but remaining stoic. That entire family had so much poise—Token himself remained calmer than I'd have imagined for someone in his position… granted, his work as a pre-med student was probably a big factor for keeping him focused.

His father was the one who really took the situation under control. (Which only served as a reminder to me just how much we had to thank that man for: using his property for our League base, the top-notch equipment we were given access to, the well-kept secrecy…) He placed no blame on anyone, asked no questions beyond what Craig had already filled him in on; his first comment to the re-gathered group of us was, "I can't thank you enough for everything you do, but you listen to me: play it safe. I understand that you boys are up against a lot, and that there's more riding on your shoulders than I can even think of, but don't push yourselves too far."

"Sorry for what happened tonight." Mosquito's guilt was an unmistakable driving force in his tone. "This could have been avoided."

"But it wasn't," Mr. Black pointed out, not unkindly. "Look, we all learned in this town, a long time ago, that we can't immediately turn to hindsight when things like this happen. My son is a smart young man, and I trust that if he got injured, it was for a damn good reason."

"He's one hell of a fighter, too, sir," I added. Mr. Black thanked me with an honest smile. "Let us know how he's doing once someone sees him. Are you going to Hell's Pass, or…?"

Ugh, what a time for me to remember just what a terribly-named hospital that was for Token to have to put up with right now.

"Not for long, that's for damn sure." Token's father shook his head. "We may need to fly out to Denver. I'm not sure; we'll see. Now, if it's not too much to ask, could we have one of you come along with us? I think we might need you," Mr. Black said, still maintaining a sense of stoicism in the midst of the crisis.

When we were growing up, Craig, Clyde and Token had always seemed to be pretty close as friends, in the way that me, Kyle, Kenny and even Cartman had been and still were. Based on that, offered, "You go, dude," and nodded at Craig, who paused before firmly nodding back. What I saw in his face, though, was some awful mix of terror and woeful understanding.

So as not to part on sudden terms, I set a hand on Craig's arm. "Hey," I said in an undertone. I tugged him aside, and knew we were both shaking. I still felt that, after all these years, I didn't know Craig all too well, so I had no idea if he'd want to even talk about anything at the moment or what, but I pressed on, in the interest of getting Token to a surgeon, and fast. "Dude," I said, "you seriously saved all of us tonight. If we didn't have you on the team, that pit'd still be open, and then who knows what? Thanks for everything, man, I mean it." Craig nodded modestly. "I'd get it if you wanna be the one staying here, too," I said, realizing I'd jumped on the assumption that he'd be the one to leave. "What's your call?"

Craig shook his head. "You stay," he agreed. "We already said I'd go, and I want to. I'll try to get back here as soon as I can, though, and I'll keep you guys posted and stuff. Go back after that Lion, finish this shit up, and sabotage that fucking Carnival before any more of those nightmare holes can open up, or whatever."

Hardly in control of the way I spoke, the next thing I uttered was, "Good luck."

"Yeah, same," said Craig. The two of us returned to the others, and while the mountain of tasks we still had piled before us rushed through my mind, the same words were uttered out of each of us simultaneously:

"See you soon."

And after that, I barely had time to blink before the mission spun full-tilt; barely had a second to pause before it became poignantly clear that Tenorman and Damien's Carnival had already begun.

– – –

_Butters_

As Disarray and the enormous, ancient Lion tore through the forest, the beast leaving singed footprints as it went, I came to an instant realization:

There were three of us. Just three. All forms of backup had troubles of their own to see to. Three of us, against, well, God only knew how many. All I knew, going into it, was that we were in pursuit of Disarray. And, therefore, a bit more truth to the whole terrible situation.

Three of us, many very similar concerns. Same concerns, differing priorities. But no matter who or what we'd find at the end of Disarray's current trail that he and that Lion were leading us down, I had a feeling that it would all boil down, in the end, to another grouping of three. Tenorman, Damien, Disarray. And the primary question: who was the real 'ringleader' behind their whole operation?

They did have something very much in common: each, historically and from what we could currently gather, had their own very distinct set of goals and tactics. Right now, they had banded together using the same vehicle for attack. Sooner or later, though, I figured, that would have to change. Sooner or later, those three very different yet similarly self-serving men would pose not one but three very distinct threats against us, our town, and, well, every bit of reality. Because each one had the means to crumble it.

Mysterion, naturally, took the lead in our chase. He nimbly navigated us through the thicket the Lion had lumbered off through. It was no surprise that we were heading toward the mountains, but I had to start questioning how well we might be handling our (rather obvious) choice of going after our enemies.

We were going farther from town. No one, to my knowledge, had alerted Agent Murphy of Yates' apparent betrayal to his own prided force. Maybe Murphy already knew. Three League members were currently putting their all into seeing the Harrisons safely home, but I was still worried, as I had to imagine Kenny was, as well: there was a lesson in what had happened to Red. She had been taken suddenly and silently; no words, no warning, nothing left in her wake. Meaning that whatever breach there was between our Circle of reality and, well, 'theirs' could be opened up and traversed at will by those who knew how to access it.

Just protection wasn't enough. I had a feeling that once someone in the opposition wanted to suck somebody out of reality and into the Between, they just… could. Yes, we had to stop them, of course we had to stop them, but until we could infiltrate their home base and fight them without any of this running around, we and everyone around us were at the mercy of their whims.

So it really was a matter of just _getting there…_ I just hated to think that us chasing the Lion might herald some kind of split in the team. The League was strongest when everyone was together. I hated all of this splitting up.

It wasn't the right way for us to continue on.

It was just plain chaotic.

We had very few options at present, though, so we continued on, keeping up with Disarray and his Hellborne beast toward the mountains, toward the mines, toward the Carnival.

We did not speak as we traveled. Everything we needed to do was understood. Toolshed's group could handle and take down the Leopard. Our job was the Lion… and then, we'd be in. We'd find Damien, find Red, find a way to stop Tenorman from building a bridge between our world and the Dreamlands. Nightmares are terrible enough without being forced to live them. If we did not put an end to the Carnival, South Park itself would be an open portal straight to Hell. So our mission was clear: do whatever it took to push the enemy back.

Whatever it took.

We followed the Lion's smoldering prints to a small clearing halfway up a slope that would lead further into the mountains. I caught a quick glimpse of the area: underbrush, large trees with coarse trunks… and then even the moon was gone.

It was pitch dark in the clearing. The trees, full of summer leaves, blocked what stars had been showing in the cloudy night sky, and I could hear nothing that could suggest the Lion's lingering presence. Not a breath, not a growl, not a single malicious purr. Nothing.

Deep, deep, pitch, end-of-the-shadow black.

I reached out to my left, and clenched my hand when my fingers found Mysterion's shoulder. "Harmony?" he asked, hushed in tone.

"Yeah."

"Coon still here?"

"Um…"

I reached out to my right, and blindly felt at the air. Nothing but air.

Just as my lips began moving to form the question, _"Where are you?"_ a light shone sternly into my face. I yelped and stumbled back, letting go of my confirmed teammate. Disarray's distorted face appeared before me, and as a cry of alarm burned in my throat, he slapped a hand over my mouth and coaxed, _"Shhhh."_

"Where's the Lion?" I managed to ask into his hand.

"Waiting." Disarray grinned, and I noticed, for the first time, the harsh flashlight he held up into my eyes.

He was then shoved off of me, thanks to a swift kick to the gut, delivered by a very unimpressed Mysterion. "Quit playing games!" the League leader demanded. "I'm sick of it. What's this one about, and where's the Coon?"

"Guys," the voice of the very one in question answered, "I'm right over here, chill."

And maybe we would have. Maybe we could have been satisfied with only that, if at that very moment Disarray had not turned around and thrown his flashlight at the Coon's head, which sent him tripping backwards into a thick underbrush of leaves. The leaves then gave and sank into the ground, taking our companion down with them. Both of us still standing called out after him, and rushed a few steps in that direction, but a light then spilled over the entire clearing, from a source I had not noticed upon our arrival. As the clearing came into view around us, Mysterion and I caught each other and doubled back—we had found ourselves poised on the edge of an enormous, crude but round pit… yet another sinkhole through the Circles like the one in the Home Depot parking lot.

"Fuck," Mysterion muttered, then, down into the pit, he called out, "Coon! You down there?"

A faint moan echoed back up. "Yeah," came the answer. "My fuckin' back hurts, though."

"Can you see?" I wondered.

Cautiously, I peered over the edge of the pit.

"'Course I can—oh… shit…"

While he was answering me, all three of us—the two of us looking down and the one stuck in the pit itself—noticed the same thing. Well, we knew now where the Lion had gone off to.

Several feet down, close enough for us to have a clear view of the nightmare but far deep enough for the walls not to be scaled, the Lion stood up over the Coon, who had nothing but his own weapons and the fallen flashlight to defend himself. There was nothing else in the pit. Not even a long branch that could help him out some. Nothing.

"Been such a long time since the days of Christians versus Lions," Disarray laughed, seemingly from all around us. "Damien keeps on talking about wanting to revive that kind of thing, but I never really got an idea of what those days were like. Figured I'd find out how I liked it through trial and error."

I glanced around for him, then finally spotted him on the other side of the pit, now about half a football field away from me and Mysterion. Disarray stood, now, just outside the place giving off the full light: a fair-sized shack, made of decrepit soft wood, the only building in the surrounding area. A spotlight had been set up on its roof, which could not have been taller than eight feet, allowing the shabby place to be something of a lighthouse… an unreachable gleam at the top of the pit.

"You're sick," I growled over at Disarray. "You're sick, you are _sick!_ Let him up!"

"And miss all the fun?" my ex-partner gloated. "That's one of the best parts about being dead, my friend. Getting to decide how I might like to see other people die."

"You're not just leaving him down there?" Mysterion hollered over.

"Oh, of course I am."

"Guys!" the Coon called up. "You wanna shoot at this fucking thing, or something?"

Panic pulsed through me. Every nerve, every neuron, everything was just one static state of pure, wired panic.

I had to do something…

We were stuck, but we had to move…

The lion growled.

"Mother_fucker,"_ the Coon complained. "Aye! Mysterion! Harmony! Little help?"

"We're working on it," Mysterion managed, glaring across the pit at our opponent.

"Oh, and where would we be without an _audience_ for such a time-honored display?" Disarray continued. "Let's see, we've got me, you, and… oh! I know."

He disappeared through the door of the shack behind him, and a moment later, he walked back out with a woman clad in a tight purple dress; the ensemble was completed by a red sash of a belt, and high red heels. Her head was down, and her brown hair fell loose over her features, but I could make out a pristine white gag tied around her mouth. And the second before Disarray forced her head up, I recognized exactly who she was. I'd just never seen her with her hair down before.

Liane Cartman.

Her eyes, once I could see them, were wide open and sleepless, and as soon as she saw me and Mysterion, she let out a cry into her gag. She was calling out a plea.

"South Park's very own Whore of Babylon! Welcome to the show!" Disarray introduced, keeping a firm grip on her. Liane shouted out something else that I could not make out. "Isn't purple a great color for her? Color of royalty, y'know."

"Let her go," Mysterion warned.

"Not so fast," Disarray grinned. "Got some interesting stuff to share with you first. See, here's something really interesting I learned about this lady. Not only is she responsible for churnin' out the heir to the Prince of Darkness _and_ the fat little terror I've got down in the pit, but… oh, and here's where my job just gets _so_ much more fun… she… you wanna tell them, or can I?"

Liane screamed into her gag.

"All right, I'll tell them, then," said Disarray.

Liane screamed again.

"Stop!" I shouted.

"Did you know," Disarray continued, as if nothing else was happening, "that this woman was in Jack Tenorman's will? And she never claimed what he left her. Damn shame, Whore of Babylon… damn, damn shame. 'Course, I'd be out of a job now if you had. Isn't life just fun like that?"

"The fuck is going on up there?!" the Coon shouted up.

The next scream out of Liane's gagged mouth, I could make out perfectly:

_"ERIC!"_

She shook herself away from General Disarray's grip and made a run for the edge of the pit, but her captor caught up with her and grabbed her back. A glimmer of an idea lit his distorted face after a second, however, and he then gripped her by the hair, and leaned her, onto her toes, over the mouth of the pit.

"You get a prize if you win, Coon!" Disarray shouted down. "You beat the Lion, I'll let Mommy go."

"…Mom…?"

Eric's voice was caught and weakened. And echoed by a subdued roar from the Lion.

It was looking like there was not a single possible way this situation could end well. Not at all.

What the hell could we do? I glanced frantically around the clearing, wondering if perhaps I'd find something of use in that shed, or if there were some way that I could go down into the pit. But that was just insane—willingly go down against a Lion that could burn the very ground as it walked? …Right, and save a friend in the meantime.

The Coon was in the pit, and though Mysterion and I were currently on solid ground, all three of us were trapped. Only three of us—everyone else presently occupied. No one close enough to call…

"Mom!"

Eric sounded a little stronger the second time he called out. Disarray had indeed provoked him, but Eric's brain is one that needs a delicate balance; I know, my brain's kind of the same way. He was either going to go apeshit furious and wear himself out in a matter of minutes, or shut down completely.

It was no stretch to guess that he'd lean toward the furious.

Mysterion described that particular mode of the Coon's as _going feral._ It was kind of true. I glanced over the side of the pit, feeling my lungs clench and choke me with worry, and saw the Coon instantly go not for his gun, but for an up close and personal swipe at the Lion's lower jaw.

The beast towered over our teammate, but the Coon's talons sunk in, slicing the jaw at a diagonal. The Lion, unamused, bent its head and snapped its jaws. The Coon ducked, grabbed the Lion's mane, and scrambled to the top of its head. He clenched his fists together, and, just after Liane let out another worried scream, the Coon brought his hands down at the top of the Lion's skull.

When the Lion tilted its head back to roar, the Coon grabbed hold, then jumped forward to scratch the large cat's eyes. This, however, was where he lost his balance, and while he got in a few more good scratches on his way down, he slid to the ground, somehow managing to stay on his feet.

"This is enthralling," Disarray commented flatly, "but there's got to be a way to make this more interesting. Oh!" He snapped his fingers, briefly letting go of Liane as he did. She cried out, but he caught her while she still dangled over the pit. "I know."

"You little asshole!" the Coon shouted up. "You guys, shut that fucker up or come help me! God! Fuck!"

He was right—we had to go after Disarray. I started to dart for the other side of the pit, but that terrible young man simply grabbed Mrs. Cartman around her neck, and held her directly over the gaping hole. I yelped, and doubled back.

"What do we do?" I asked Mysterion frantically.

"Not looking pretty, is it?" he grunted, as he took a look around the clearing. "Put her down, Disarray!" he shouted over at our opponent. Slowly, taunting us all the while, Disarray set Liane back onto her feet.

Her ankles shook, to the point that I thought her rocking would snap the stilettos she'd been most likely forced to wear. Her presence here did beg the obvious questions: when had they taken her? And, of course, the loaded, _why?_

For Tenorman to use as leverage? For Damien? Or as a means of getting at the Coon? There was always the option that all of those possibilities were correct.

That was just the problem, wasn't it? There was so much, _too_ much, that Damien and his group of followers could use against us. Break one of us, and they could potentially break us all.

"What do you want?" Mysterion continued. "Don't you like to bargain? Isn't that where all you Carny assholes get off? What're you looking for now?"

Our opponent let out a barking laugh. Below us, the Coon was swearing up a tornado at the Lion, and I heard him begin to fire the hell out of his .45.

"Damien Thorn has every birth right to lead this building of a brand new Hell," Disarray announced. "Scott Tenorman provides the services, the labor, and he got one lucky wish in return. They _do_ love bargaining in Hell, I'll give you that.

"But what I like is straight up payment. I'm a patron of Damien's arts, you see. Hell gets stronger with every soul I can tempt over the river. Doesn't matter if you wanna join the cause or not. A soul is Immortal, Mysterion. Gets stronger the closer you get to the flames." Oh, he seemed so pleased with himself. I felt my right hand move to my gun. I knew he'd dodge if I tried to shoot him; I knew my bullets wouldn't be able to do a thing to him, anyway. But, God, I wanted to sink one in him no matter what the outcome.

"What do you _want?!"_ Mysterion demanded again. "Where do you fit into any of this?"

Liane struggled against her captor, whose response was merely, "I just love watching things burn."

Disarray saw my hand lighting on my gun, and acted out by grabbing one of his own out of his boot. He shot it up at the roof of the shack, and hit the back of the spotlight. The lamp weakened, and crashed into the roof, which itself immediately caught fire. I saw Liane's eyes flash open wide, and she called out her son's name again, along with a string of other words of warning that I simply could not make out.

"LET MY MOM GO, ASSHOLE!" the Coon shouted up at Disarray, who gave no response.

Mysterion and I shared a quick and panicked look as the rest of the shack began to burn. The fire was very contained—the summer underbrush would not catch too drastically, and the shack was sure to burn like a bonfire… it would remain its own source of light for minutes more, and then we'd all be plunged into darkness again.

The flames flickered red, white, yellow and orange behind Disarray, casting menacing silhouettes all around us. The fire singed the air, and I felt my lungs fill with smoke. I checked on Mysterion again, knowing that he was prone to weave in and out between our Circle of reality, and the state of mind that forced one to wander the Dreamlands. He seemed to be fully aware… but at a loss.

Our nearest opponent was the Lion in the pit, but if we both went after it, we'd be stuck, and Disarray would get away. But he was so far from us, any move we made to reach him would be easily countered.

The Coon was sure to lose stamina fast, too, especially now with the added heat from the rising fire. I glanced down over the edge.

The Lion circled our teammate slowly, its eyes glinting along with the flames. Shadows danced freely on the floor of the sinkhole, and several times the Coon tripped, from not being able to discern where there might be a dip in the ground, and where he was just treading on a trick of the light. But he persevered.

He scratched the Lion five more times across its snout, but I could see fatigue setting in. He stepped back, gasping for breath. _Hang in there…_ I willed him. A thought hit me, then. We couldn't go down, but we could still help.

I pulled the pistol from my utility belt. "Catch!" I hollered down. When I knew I'd caught his attention, I hurled the .45 down.

He flinched before he could catch it, and, as I should have figured, it fired when it hit a rock that jostled the trigger. I yelped, afraid the bullet would find the wrong target, but it sailed toward the Lion's gut, and cut through fur and flesh. The Lion merely grumbled at the disturbance, and as the Coon fumbled to pick the weapon up, he shouted up at me, "Watch where you fuckin' throw a gun, asshole!"

"Sorry," I called back down. "But you've got it now, use it!"

I'm sure I saw him mutter, _"Don't have to tell me that,"_ but I ignored it, looking instead across the pit to see if any of the turned situation had fazed Disarray even slightly. He showed no indication of any emotion whatsoever. Win or lose, I was sure he hardly cared about the outcome, because no matter what happened, he'd have some way to get one up on us again.

Gunshots fired until the pistol ran out of ammunition.

I took another look down into the pit, heart racing, just as the Lion shook off the most recent hit he'd taken, and raised up a massive paw. The Coon muttered something else and ran out of the way as the paw came down. And again. And again. The Coon swept out with his taloned armor and got in a cut, but his stamina was failing something awful.

The Lion's next swipe hit home. The Coon got battered off to the side of the pit, where he collided with the dirt wall. Stunned, he got back on his feet. "That the best you got?" he panted back at the Lion.

The beast retaliated with a territorial roar, and another massive swipe, which threw my teammate into the farther, crude dirt wall. I heard an uncharacteristic yelp bolt out of him before he slumped to the ground, completely unconscious.

"Shit," Mysterion bit out beside me.

"Eric!" I called down.

The Lion was standing over him.

Across from me, his poor mother, with whom he had not exchanged a single proper word for days upon days, emitted a long, painful scream into the pure white towel that was gagging her. I'd always thought she was a decent-looking lady, put-together if not downright pretty, but her features contorted as agony set in, after she had been forced to watch that scene unfold several feet below her. Mascara ran down her face as she let herself cry—she seemed too terrified to close her eyes; her dilated pupils stared hauntedly down into the pit as she screamed out demands into her gag, which was now rapidly staining black from her makeup.

The Lion was standing directly over her only legitimate son.

"Wake up!" I shouted down.

No response. The Lion let out what sounded like a very decisive, finalizing roar.

At that very second, I felt my mind snap. Now, not snap to any degree of insanity, not snap to some old repressed memory or anything like that, just snap into survival mode, more than anything. We were a team, he was my friend, the world was in danger, and I was—

I was really good at setting traps.

Once upon a time, it had come with the title. Chaos. I could manipulate, strategize, warp a situation around, turn any location into a perfect obstacle or cage. Traps, traps… I had nothing that could stop the Lion. Nothing but myself, really, and I didn't have much…

With hardly any time to think up a real plan, I felt around my utility belt. Rope. That was one thing I did have. I had rope. I had enough of it to get myself down into the pit, anyway. And—yes, yes, I still had extending nets. Those little mesh lifesavers, yes, good, good this was shaping up to a situation I could take advantage of…

But I'd thrown away my gun. I could get down there to help, but what then?

No time. I hurled down one of my nets, aiming for the Lion's neck. It extended and caught just in time to aggravate the enormous beast, and for that I was grateful. Working fast, I un-wound my rope and held an end of it out to Mysterion. "Take this," I commanded him.

"What?" He'd shirked back at the sight of it.

"Take it!" I insisted. "Tie it off! I'm going down."

"Are you serious?!"

"Dead serious. Take the rope."

Mysterion's eyes narrowed, and he glared into me. Judging my every breath for the time being. I understood his hesitance. Mysterion had welcomed me into the group under my recently-adopted alter ego. Altered ego, more like. Marjorine had always been something of a savior to my own life; I'd taken the steps to truly make her a hero.

But from the moment we'd stepped into that clearing, I'd begun feeling that this was a situation I needed to take care of in a different way. Mysterion knew that. I'm not a very hard book to read.

"You're _Harmony,"_ he stressed. As if issuing a warning.

He had every right to threaten me, if that was his aim. Every right.

Yes. Yes, I was Harmony. Agent Harmony, who had joined the Shadow League to provide a helping hand, to serve as a medical aide, to do everything I could to right much of the damage I once had caused.

If Disarray still existed, however, there was a lot of cleanup I still had to do.

The universe is divided into Circles, and the Divine Rule of Three. That night, right then and there, I felt as though I'd been neglecting my own third part. Harmony wasn't the solution to Chaos. Harmony was just the other side of the mirror. The other side of the coin.

"Take the rope, Mysterion," I asked sternly. "The Coon's going to die if one of us doesn't go down there. I can't just stand here and watch Disarray get away with this. We need to move. Otherwise—"

Mysterion nodded. With some lingering resistance, he took hold of the rope. When he had both hands full, tossing the rest of the rope down into the Lion's pit, I grabbed two of my teammate's Roman candles. He snapped at me, but I simply shoved them into my own belt, and began sashaying down the dirt walls, and closer to the bottom of the pit.

The Lion, caught in the net, was throwing a tantrum. I knew it had been risky—it lashed around the pit, and twice stepped much too close to the Coon. I jumped down when I had reached a depth that I could manage, and instantly grabbed the first rock I could find and hurled it at the Lion's hind leg. The beast roared and whirled around to take a bite at me. I ducked under its chin, swift on the putrid wind that was its huff of breath, and ran toward my fallen friend, ready to shake him back to consciousness.

I yanked at his shoulders and rolled him onto his back, so that he'd have plenty of air to breathe, then, all my judgment failing me for a solution, kicked him in the gut in hopes that that would unstop his wind pipe and get him up and moving.

"No outside help in a battle like this!" Disarray taunted down at me.

I lifted my gaze just in time to see Mysterion, who must have tied off the rope, advancing on our foe with _shuriken_ between his knuckles. He took a swipe at Disarray's face just as I heard the Lion roar, and felt its breath reek down from directly behind me. The Coon coughed. Relieved, but in a hurry, I grabbed him by the front of his emblematic shirt, and hauled him off to the side, picking up most of his dead weight as he got settled back on his feet, breathing and coughing sporadically.

Sparks were going off inside me as I turned to face the Lion once again. For a brief second or two, I stalled. I knew what I was feeling. I knew the dangers and the thrills of having a static tempest stirring inside me.

Rage, you see, has a special place in the human psyche. For many years, I had suppressed it. I've had an ongoing battle with the way I personally deal with my own rage, and how it, in turn, decides to attack me.

This time, it was different. This time, I had control.

Sometimes, the only way to prevent destruction is to destroy in other ways. To sacrifice. And, in so doing:

Rebuild.

_"Don't you know that control demands disorder? You can rebuild."_ Those were the words I had heard, days before, during the GSM's radio broadcasts. Rebuild—not my Tower, but the sum of my consciousness. Not the terror left in my past follies' wake, but the person I had been who could be so strong-willed, so decisive, so ready with a cunning idea. _Rebuild._ They had meant it to be a warning.

That's what their Red Radio project was, I realized. Clues and warnings, glimpses of the Hell that waited behind the Carnival gates, beyond the challenges presented by the Wolf, the Leopard and the Lion.

Joke was on them, though. I'd already been through Hell.

And I was proud of the person I'd become after getting out of it.

If I didn't want anyone else to burn in their own pits of despair, then I had to make the call. I had to make the sacrifice. But before anything else, I had to kill that damn Lion.

I had no lighter, and the flames above me were too far out of reach to utilize. I needed firepower or my plan would never work. Fortunately, every bit of earth that the Lion's paws touched became burning residue, some of it even smelling of sulfur. It must have walked through Hell and through the iron mines so many times that the beast itself was covered in the dust of the Golem material.

Bad, bad call, Disarray. Don't make something from Hell so flammable.

And you thought you'd outsmarted me once, General Disarray. You thought I'd always be so weak as to blindly stumble toward such a frivolous goal as the End of all things. You even found a loophole through death itself, just to get back to me.

You were wrong.

I balanced out.

"Hey!" I shouted to the Lion. "I'm right here! Come get me! Think I'm afraid of you? _Try me!"_

The outraged creature ripped through more tangles of its net, and took a strong swipe at me. Once again, I heard Liane let out a scream from above. This time, however, it was not muffled. Mysterion had gotten to her. Good.

Yet it was Mysterion's voice that shouted down what I knew to be one hell of a moment's truth:

_"CHAOS!"_

He'd called out to warn me. And to acknowledge me.

At least I'd made peace with Fate. I'd figured out that much.

I dodged the Lion's strike, and its paw hit the dirt wall of the pit behind me. As the Coon was slowly regaining his focus, I grabbed his wrist and struck his talons against the burnt rock. Sparks flew—from the wall of the pit without, from the caverns of my mind within.

This was invigoration. This was what happened when the Circles collided.

I am the Between.

I'm Harmony. I'm Chaos. I'm not Immortal; I'm a representative of the human race, which has called both of these things into question, as long as we've been in existence. If Harmony is the question, Chaos is the answer—and vice versa, and so on, forever. I'm neither, and I'm both. I have to be. _Someone_ has to be. Or else there's no order anywhere.

So I don't care. I can't care, anymore.

I can't kill Chaos. I never did.

I held the Roman Candles' wicks to the wall, and they instantly caught fire. Quickly, I dropped the recovering Coon, and rushed at the Lion. Above me, I could hear Disarray laughing, thinking he'd won.

Remembering my duties as Agent Harmony, as a League medic, I felt myself grin as I shoved the Roman Candles down the Lion's throat. The beast coughed and choked and sputtered, and it was all I could do to grab its top lip, pull it down, and then hold the damn beast's mouth shut.

"Gotta take your medicine," I scolded Hell's embodiment of Pride. "Swallow, baby, swallow."

The enormous Lion struggled against me, to the point that I feared I would not be able to hold on much longer on my own.

"FUCK!" I heard Mysterion shout from overhead.

A second later, he was down in the pit with us, as the flames began to die up above. "That little piece of _SHIT,"_ Mysterion snarled, clearly acknowledging Disarray in his fury. He said nothing directly to me, but ran up to the Lion and helped me keep its mouth closed. A few seconds later, the Coon was on his feet, but he didn't make his way to us before the Lion swallowed.

Mysterion and I backed off and took cover as best we could when the explosion happened. Curiosity gripped me enough to make me turn just in time to watch the effect of my invented attack. It had hit precisely the way I'd been hoping.

The Lion let out a roar of discomfort, and when it did, the explosives rattled about in its throat, bursting sparks of light up out of the beast's mouth. Disturbed and close to dying, the Lion lashed out, pawing at the ground over and over, thus creating more and more sparks, which licked up out of the earth and caught the pads of its feet. Sparks flew from the Lion's mouth as the blaze of the shed began to die down up above us, and one last roar heralded the beast's end.

The fireworks had gone off inside the Lion as the ground sparked all around it; I tucked my head away yet again when I heard something begin to rupture. Bones snapped, and heat from behind me told me that the Lion's mane had caught fire—then the rest of its thinning fur. Peering around yet again, I watched the entire large body go up in flames just as easily as the shed.

Beneath me, the ground felt hot and smelled of sulfur. But in seconds, the Lion was gone.

Unfortunately, so, soon, was Disarray.

All of the flames had gone out, and the three of us were left in the pit with only the flashlight that Disarray had knocked the Coon down with. Its pale light illuminated the few rocks and packed dirt that served as our surroundings, and the sound of a sputtering old street car at the top of the pit suggested that Disarray was being carted away elsewhere.

Before he made his leave, however, he called down, "Well, well. Breaking rules, are we? No wrong way to make it to Hell, boys!"

Liane let out yet another scream.

That got the Coon stirring full force again, and he jabbed his talons into the side of the pit. "You fucking asshole, let her go!" he shouted up. "Mom!"

"Eric," Liane cried out, indeed without her gag, "Eric, honey, please, don't follow them! Don't follow them! They want to—"

She was then muffled, and Disarray shouted out, "Must run! But you've got your Carnival tickets now! It's gonna be fun for the whole damn family!"

"MOTHERFUCKER!"

The Coon passed hand over hand as if climbing a ladder, sinking his talons into the wall. But the pit proved too steep. He'd only climbed a few feet before he lost his momentum and fell. I rushed to my feet, but as soon as I'd caught him, he whirled around and punched me.

Hard.

The action opened up a small scratch on my face, at the corner of the eye I'd already had mended once thanks to one of Kenny's _shuriken_ when we were kids.

"DID I ASK YOU TO HELP ME?!" the Coon screamed at me.

"Actually, yeah, you did!" I shouted back, not moving. "What was that for?"

"I don't need you fighting my battles for me. Quit it!"

"I—you were gonna get ripped apart, what else was I supposed to do?!"

"I don't—_who even are you?"_

…Valid question.

"Yeah," Mysterion echoed, now on his feet again as well. "Care to elaborate?"

He walked up to us, scooping up the flashlight as he did. He shone the light toward the top of the pit, and said into the wire, "Red Serge, can you get a GPS marker on our location?"

"What's going on?" Red Serge asked in rapid response.

"We're kinda fucked."

"Well, okay, then. Mosquito, Marpesia and Angel were good for reassignments anyway. Mosquito's with Toolshed and them, and lucky for you guys, the girls are already on their way."

"Pretty good timing for an Angel," Mysterion sighed. He glared at us, shining the flashlight between me and the Coon. "I don't know how many _fucking times_ I've had to remind you two to play nice," he growled. "And—Butters… Harmo… _you,"_ he continued, looking rather unimpressed, "care to elaborate? That was some Chaos shit you just…"

I nodded. "I won't fight you on that," I said.

"Meaning what?" he demanded.

Taking in a deep breath, I gathered all of my thoughts. I'd need some time to really be at peace with the decision, but fighting back Hell was something that required a little bit of Chaos. And it wasn't about all or nothing—I could be both, I had to be both… I just had to accept that the side of me that had been Chaos was still there. I'd become stronger, though. Chaos was not going to be vulnerable and full of delusion this time.

"Chaos is just a part of who I am."

"I mean, are you _with us?"_ Mysterion demanded.

"Of course I am," I assured him. "I just… kinda think Harmony's gonna take a rest. Thanks for letting me be a part of the League, Mysterion. I hope I can still be a part of it, or with you guys in some way, but I can't stay on the defensive side of this much longer. I've really gotta fight back."

Mysterion looked tense, but he did not argue with me. He shifted his masked glance to the Coon, who himself was giving me scrutiny. But he seemed too much in shock, still, over the plight of his mother, to be anything but angry.

The next several minutes passed in a blur of Eric cursing nearly everything in existence. Primarily me.

"_Fuck_ you!" he shouted toward the end of his tirade, all but attacking me again. "He told_ me_ to beat that thing, I asked you to help me, maybe, sure, whatever, but I's supposed to beat that fucking thing! I didn't, and now God fucking knows what Tenorman's gonna do. To my _mom."_

"You've been avoiding even talking to her," I pointed out, dressing the cut at the corner of my eye with gauze from my arsenal.

"Shut the fuck up! I was going to!"

"Guys?"

The Guardian Angel's voice sailed through the darkness just as the flashlight flickered out. Mysterion was the one to answer her, and the only one of the three of us to say a word before Angel and Marpesia threw down the rope I had earlier used, and helped us all out. It was Mysterion who told the girls what had happened with Disarray and the Lion; questions were asked of all of us, but the Coon refused to speak, and I began to fear anything that I might say, or how I might sound.

Marpesia did catch onto the fact that I was struggling somewhat, and, as the two, armed with lights of their own, led us back down the slope to re-join with the others, she asked, "What happened back there? To you?"

"What, my eye?" I wondered. My voice came out at its usual tone, not the higher alto I affected for Marjorine and Harmony. It had been, I realized, since I'd made the decision to go into the pit.

"No." Lowering her tone to a whisper, she clarified, "Butters, what's going on?"

All I said in response was, "Chaos."

And all she returned with was, "I see."

She patted my back three times. We did not get a chance to speak privately again until much, much later.

– – –

When we made it back to the parking lot where the evening had started, we were just in time to see a car driving away, and three of our teammates gathered at the site of the pit the Lion had first emerged from. The pit had now been sealed up, and, I noticed, TupperWear and Endgame were missing from the group. Not to mention that Stan, Kyle and Clyde hardly seemed to be mission-ready. Kyle was standing at the driver's side door of Token's van, trying to encourage the other two to move.

Marpesia's pace quickened, and she broke into a full run after letting out a shout. "What?" I wondered, keeping up with her for a moment.

"That was Token's dad's car!" she let out in a rush.

Rather than run toward the others, she began running after the car. Stan rushed forward to grab her back, and that was the very second that Wendy broke from keeping herself focused as Marpesia and let out an awful, worried scream. "What happened?!" she cried out.

"Wendy—Wendy, hold on," Stan tried, tightening his grip on her.

"Let me go! Where's Token?!"

Beside me, I knew I saw Eric tense up. He did like her. I knew it. He just never showed anything for anyone. Not to mention that he was feeling pretty darn empty at that point, considering that the only woman in his life (at the time being) had just been hauled off to Hell on Earth without the two having been able to exchange a word.

"We're gonna fill everyone in," said Stan. "Just—Wendy, stop trying to run."

"I'm not!"

"Your feet're moving, girl, slow down."

Wendy caught herself, and went almost completely limp against Stan. Kyle left the van to help get Wendy on her own two feet, and as soon as she had support on both sides, she removed her helmet, but did not stop staring after the car.

"What happened?" Mysterion posed to the entire group. "You get the Leopard?"

"Yeah, but it didn't go quietly," Stan answered. "How about you guys and the Lion?"

"Roughly the same," Mysterion admitted. "Let's get off the street, guys, we've got a fucking load to discuss. Where's—?"

"Token's out," said Clyde, stepping forward. He was holding up his cell phone as best he could with both hands, each of them shaking.

"Out? What d'you mean, out?"

"Craig's gonna be texting us, he went with Token to get hospital word, and—"

"Hospital?" I sputtered.

"Oh, my God," Angel breathed. "Guys, what happened?"

"No easy way to talk about it," Clyde told us, "so, uh…"

"The Leopard almost dragged Token down through the pit with him," Stan explained. He and Kyle had to work harder to keep Wendy standing after that came out. "It bit through Token's leg, and, uh… what's the word from Craig, dude?"

"Token's not a surgeon, but he's interned and sent enough people to see 'em to know, I guess," said Clyde. "I feel fucking sick. He's probably got nerve damage, broken knee, broken leg. He's out."

"Oh, God…" Wendy gasped. "Oh, God…"

Mysterion shook his head. "Come on," he urged. "Guys, we need to move. That sucks. That fucking _sucks_ that he's out. Is Craig down, too?"

"No," Clyde confirmed. "Just went for kinda moral support with Token's parents."

"Broken leg?" Mysterion repeated.

"Yeah, and it really wasn't pretty," said Kyle. "Guys, I vote that we move this outta here. And where's Gary? What's going on with him?"

"We spoke," Angel confirmed, "and we'll talk further, I'm sure."

Mysterion stared back at the mountains, then took stock of each of us, and held his head. "One thing's for sure, at least," he announced: "the Carnival's definitely in business. We're at more than a few losses, but we need a plan of attack."

The agreement was unanimous. We managed a quick sweep back through the Home Depot to check for and collect any belongings left behind, and Angel had Red Serge dispatch Murphy and a small squad to section off the parking lot and get in contact with the employees that were not taken away to the Carnival that evening. Iron Maiden was set to return to the base with Gary, and a call was made out to Henrietta and Wilcox as well.

We had to press on, despite how unraveled everything seemed. Just as one of us clawed our way out of a seemingly endless pit of distress, another opened. Burning, and threatening everything that kept our morale together.

That was the night before the final break, the final breach. The night before we lost another member of the team.

The night that I welcomed Chaos back into my life, this time because I knew that doing so could very well save everyone.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

Oh gosh this one was fun. ^^ Another crazy month, schedule-wise, but we hope you're enjoying the story! I'm going to try to get at least two chapters up in December. :3 Especially since, after next time's chapter, we'll be going thick into Carnival stuff, and a few extra new surprises… I'm also excited to write out more about Liane… and Gary... and Chaos (welcome back, Chaos, I know we, the writers, have missed you…)… and what exactly will happen to Token... D:

Oh, and a quick note on Clyde: I've gotten a couple questions about it, and I vaguely alluded to it in this chapter, but I am going to be changing just _one thing_ in _Cthulhu Fhtagn,_ and that's what happens to Clyde's mom. Obviously she's dead in the show now, and as morbid as it is, I feel like that tragedy actually lends a lot to Clyde's character to stick with that part of the _South Park_ canon. I'll be soon going back to _Cthulhu Fhtagn_ to switch the victim to his father or sister instead. This has been a Clyde PSA. I enjoy Clyde. Poor guy.

Thank you so, so much for reading! We'll be going on a bit of a break to get through some holiday craziness and finish a couple of other projects before chapter 15, but we'll see you very soon!

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	15. Ep 15: Marching Orders

_****__ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION – EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE– ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL LOVECRAFT REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. __|_|_|

_Butters_

Reconvening after such a tumultuous night was difficult, but necessary. Everyone seemed so scattered… only Karen McCormick really seemed to be in a stable state of mind. Token was usually a great peace-keeper—he'd been rendered indisposed, and the latest from Craig, by the time the rest of us were back at the base and gathering ourselves as best we could, was that Token was en route to a top-tier hospital in Denver. So. He was out.

Kenny had more than enough to sort through, Kyle looked pretty darn spent after fighting through the pain in his arms, Stan looked tired as hell, and Eric, well… Eric had just seen his mother get dragged off after being used as bait and humiliated. Eric wasn't talking. As for Clyde… Clyde wasn't doing so great, and I knew (having been the source of some of his League problems before) how hard he took direct hits. Indirect ones, too. Clyde was slipping in his morale. Gosh, everyone was.

Even Wendy. It hurt to see her trying so hard to hold herself together. She'd been so on and off about whether she wanted to try a relationship with Token again, and that night more or less proved, to me almost as clearly as it did to her, that she still felt very deeply for him.

But none of us had the time we needed to focus on ourselves, not that night. We'd been dealt a heavy blow, and had to simply recover and move on. Not to mention fill in the outlier in the equation that night. After a slight struggle between Kenny and Clyde over how best to lay out the full story, we brought Gary Harrison back to the League base.

And it was Karen who got us all to behave.

First on her agenda was primarily making us all shower and return to street clothes, which was probably for the best, especially considering her basic argument: "If you guys are serious about letting Gary in on who we are and why we're looking for his help, the least we can do is not be covered in dirt and blood. Honestly."

I had to agree. Cleaning up, for a few minutes, was a welcome start to the rest of the night. I didn't want my brain jumping through hoops or spinning or tilting at all while we all were sitting down to discuss what was sure to be a near-final plan of action.

It was kind of Kenny and Karen, despite having turned the League base into their home, to keep everyone's individual, if small, rooms in which we could keep changes of clothes, backup gear, and where we could take a bit of personal time to relax. I kept my area stocked with equal wardrobes for however I'd be feeling at any given time, and after towel-drying my hair into some kind of atrocious soppy blonde mess, I reached into the bottom drawer of my dorm-style cabinet for a pair of jeans. Finding no socks and knowing it was best not to step around the base barefoot (you never knew if you'd accidentally step on a _shuriken_ or something), I shoved my feet into a pair of boots I'd nearly forgotten I had.

Letting my hair air dry into tangles I'd deal with later, I pulled on a shirt and a light grey sweater before making my way to the meeting room. Passing by the kitchen, I noticed the McCormick siblings talking something out between one another. Though I knew better than to eavesdrop, I did slow my pace out of sheer curiosity.

Kenny still looked stone-faced and beaten. "Even if we do get in there, they still have the fucking lamp," he was saying.

"You're going to find her, Kenny," Karen assured him, gripping her brother's wrists tightly. "Besides, Ike and Timmy have been going through Stan's maps. We know where the deposits are, where the iron and stuff came from, and all…"

I continued walking, knowing that if I listened in any longer, Kenny would notice, and potentially get angry. My hands clenched into fists as I walked further down the hall, and with every step, I ran through a semblance of a mantra in my head.

_Harmony and Chaos are the same. This isn't a step back, it's a step forward. Harmony and Chaos are the same. They're the same._ There is such a thing as controlled chaos, and that exists at the center of everything. The dead center of the vast Circles that nothing else in the universe can touch.

Nearly everyone in the League existed in some kind of Space Between. Our enemies knew that. The way to fight back was to find balance, embrace what we were.

We'd outsmarted what appeared to be Fate before. We could do it again.

As I entered the meeting room, I smiled a little to myself. The fact that I was thinking in terms of _us,_ in terms of _everyone,_ proved to me that I could re-embrace Chaos without any inner repercussions. What had that persona been to me when I was younger? Personal gain. Personal advancement. And that had gotten me nowhere.

There was a better use for my ability to understand what chaos truly is. And I darn well planned to, as a part of the League.

I wasn't alone in the room. Timmy was laying out documents at the end of the table nearest the door, and kept glancing up at the parcel Damien had thrown to us in the Home Depot parking lot. It sure did look like a bomb, all right, but I knew better. The remainder of the Carnival tickets were in that parcel, ready to be handed out around the table. Ike's ticket sat at the forefront of Timmy's papers, as well.

Kenny's ticket lay much farther off, at the head of the table, where now Clyde was seated, his hands digging up into his hair—also still wet from a shower—while Bebe had her arms draped around him from behind. She was whispering something to him, but Clyde looked almost worse than Kenny had. Lying to his right was his still blood-splattered mask… some of the droplets just would not come off, it seemed.

The whiteboard behind him had been wiped clean, and standing there now, a large portfolio tucked under one arm, was Henrietta Biggle, drawing from memory the diagram of Circles from the _Dhol Chants._ I watched her work for a moment; when she'd completed her sketchy diagram, she wrote off to the side:

_She-Wolf: Greed._

_ Leopard: Lust._

_ Lion: Pride._

I shuddered, otherwise frozen where I stood, when she wrote out the word _Lion,_ and glanced around for Eric. He was in his usual seat, spinning a quarter and trying to stop it with one thick index finger. His hands were shaking so violently, though, that every attempt failed.

"Hey, man, sorry to hear about what happened." It figured that Stan would be the one ready to break the room's silence. He was occupied with re-administering a wrapped bandage on Kyle's lower left arm; Kyle kept his exposed right arm on the table, lying on two ice packs. His skin looked pretty burned, still—splotchy, as if trying to clear itself up.

Eric shrugged off Stan's comment.

"Dude, if there's anything we can do," Stan offered calmly, silencing a probably less-friendly comment that Kyle seemed ready to deliver, "say something."

Eric looked up, then went back to his quarter.

Stan gave a weak shrug. "Just trying to help."

"Speaking of help," I heard Gary Harrison begin, tepidly, "what exactly am I doing here? I just… you know… want to know…" He was seated close to where Timmy was working, and was dressed as if ready for a real business meeting, rather than a routine talk about a mission plan—his collared white shirt, brown vest and pressed matching pants seemed highly out of place at the table.

I made my presence known at that point, giving the others nods or waves as I took my seat. Stan, Kyle and Timmy were the only ones to really acknowledge me back, but that was fine; everyone had plenty to work through. Gary tried to keep a smile, but he looked more confused than anything. His eyes warily followed Henrietta's hand as she scrawled out the numbers one through nine on the whiteboard, and flinched back when she was the one to turn and address his question.

"Ever hear of Damien Thorn?" Henrietta asked him.

"Um… no…" Gary admitted. "Should I have?"

Henrietta set the dry erase marker down beside Clyde, who made the effort to look more alert at that point, and took her time walking around the table to where Gary sat. She then plunked down the portfolio and flipped it open to a page I could not see from where I sat. I knew what the book was, though: it was filled with prints of Wilcox's artwork.

"He's a painter?" Gary guessed.

The Goth sighed. "No," she corrected, "but he commissioned these. Flip through."

"Um… do I have to? This is disturbing," the devout Mormon admitted. He let all of his breath out, gathered himself, then glanced around the table once before giving Henrietta his full attention. "Plus, I—I'm still trying to figure all of this out. How are all of you guys involved? What are you even involved _in?_ And aren't you one of those Goths I always saw smoking during school?"

"Oh, no, you caught me," Henrietta intoned dully.

Before she, or anyone else, could elaborate further on Gary's real questions, Kenny made his entrance, followed a brief instant later by his sister, who in turn was accompanying Wendy. As soon as the door closed again, Bebe picked her head up, gave her fiancé a kiss on the cheek, and made her way quickly to Karen and Wendy. The second the two were close enough, Wendy fell into the hug Bebe offered; given the angle, I could see Wendy's expression perfectly. Her eyes were wide and painfully dry, and she quiveringly glared at the whiteboard.

I knew exactly where she was focused:_ Leopard: Lust._

Poor girl. I wondered how Token was faring. All that I knew, without doubting myself, was that his accident had occurred during the heat of battle. He was such a strong fighter, he must have been doing everything he could that night, pushed to the edge of his limits and beyond. We'd all given it everything that night, even if some misfortunes occurred at both pits. I'd done what I could to help defeat the Lion—with only three of us against both it and Disarray, I'd had to come up with _some_thing. Right?

Except I'd stepped all over Eric's pride in doing so.

As Karen walked the other two girls back to the table, Kenny claimed his place at the head, near Clyde (who himself seemed currently immobile), and announced, "All right, guys, let's make this a quick one. Main goal for the night is to figure out these tickets, see if we can determine an entrance, and plan when we're gonna head in to stop these bastards."

"I vote sooner than later," Kyle spoke up.

"Oh, no, so do I," Kenny assured him (and all of us), "but let's get the formalities out of the way. Also, uh…" Kenny ticked his head up in Gary's direction, and I looked over at him and Henrietta again. What a contrast those two were, she in her black lace standing over the most pristinely put together person in the room. The juxtaposition of those two made me smile a bit, though, thinking of the balanced opposites I myself had embodied. Every minute that went by made me prouder of my decision to continue the mission as Chaos. Oh, I still had plenty of work to do; it was the right choice.

"Um, hi…" Gary attempted.

"Hi," Kenny returned, sounding a bit rushed and strained, "uh—welcome, I guess." He sighed. "Gary, sorry you had to find out about all this under such constrictive circumstances. It's really rare that we let people know who we are and what we do."

My mind instantly turned to Token's parents being among the first to have known. But, of course, from the very start, Liane Cartman was the one to keep everyone's secrets. The original Coon and Friends lair had been in her basement, after all. I glanced at Eric. He was making damn sure he did not look at anyone.

"Maybe that's what I'm missing," Gary confessed, doing his best to sit up straight while Henrietta remained looming like a storm cloud over him. "Why do I need to be filled in, in the first place?" He glanced around at every one of us, lighting on two in particular. "Stan?" was the first, and almost more unsteadily, "…Karen…?"

After getting the go-ahead from Kenny, Stan took the question, standing as he spoke. "Those of us who came into Home Depot today were ready to sacrifice our identities in order to ask you a couple things that might help us," he explained. Gary listened tersely, giving no nods, no shakes of his head, no indication of leaving. "We had no idea someone on your staff was part of our current opposition."

"Which… is Hell," Gary recalled, his voice shaking.

Sighing, Stan nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, dude, it's Hell."

"Real, honest to gosh Hell?"

"Oh, my God," I heard Eric mumble. He folded his arms on the table and buried his head in one elbow. I had no way of knowing whether it was Gary's innocent comment that ticked him off, or if he was just having a hard time sitting still after watching what Disarray had been doing with Liane. Probably both.

"Yeah," Stan confirmed, keeping his tone kind and level. His hands told a different story. Both were clenched into strong fists on the table, clenching in all of his nerves and frustration. I looked from Stan to Gary to Kenny, wishing I had something to contribute. The fact was… I didn't; not yet. Nothing I could say would contribute to the conversation that needed to happen—I'd be a distraction, at best. So I stayed quiet, and listened. "Gary, we didn't know who the Leopard was or that he'd managed to walk around without us noticing. Or, as Kenny said, that it was someone on your staff."

"The store got destroyed tonight," Gary said, stunned as he made his statement. "Why did they go there?"

"Probably for you," said Kenny, his tone attempting sympathy. Gary turned pale, but said nothing. "Damien and his group are at least predictable in that they're going after people with close relationships to us in the League, particularly those with the Ginger gene in the family. As you can see, that covers a lot of ground. Parents count, latent genes count. You're probably of even more interest to them than some of our other liaisons, because you're… well, beyond being helpful, and beyond your family's genetics, Gary, you're devout."

"Devout," Gary echoed. "Hell is coming after me because I'm devout?" He shook his head. "Look, if I'm committing some kind of sin for helping you—"

"Gary, you haven't done anything wrong," Stan assured him. "I promise, you haven't. Damien is just… he's someone who seems very focused on the more arcane Hell. Is that right?" he checked with Kenny and Henrietta.

"Oh, yeah," the Goth answered.

"I guess what we're asking," Stan continued, calmly, "is if you'd be willing to help us out just a little more this time. We thought by coming clean to you about who we are, if you learned a little more about our League and our current mission, we might be able to ask you for a favor. Something not in the manner of traditional weaponry and such."

"Pray for you, you mean?" Gary wondered. One corner of his mouth ticked up as if he wanted to laugh. Either that, or he was genuinely pleased. Kenny seemed to think the former.

"I was being serious when I said that, Gary," Kenny declared. "I'm hoping that we can ask you this as a favor, and not make myself want to beg. You have been such a big help to our missions in the past, and we know we can count on you.

"I met Damien, face to face, a few nights ago," he continued, "at the Tenth Circle coffee shop."

"Which another one of his fucking beasts destroyed," Henrietta commented. She reached for a cigarette, but glares from Karen, Kenny and Clyde reminded her to put her silver case away.

"Right," Kenny agreed, "but before all of that, it was just me and Damien talking. Now… look, you remember the Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep crisis—"

I swallowed a bunch of spit I hadn't realized was collecting in my mouth. It wasn't a nervous gulp (it was pretty much just me forgetting to take normal breaths due to contributing so little to the conversation… the same thing happens to me during long movies sometimes, I know it's gross), but Kenny seemed to take it as such. I knew that the word 'Nyarlathotep' had been added just for me, as a test.

So I took the opportunity to stand and say a thing or two. I patted down my frizzy hair, took a real breath, and began, "There are written accounts for just about everything. All the big cults and stuff, anyway. It's all words that move people into action, words that people hear, and say, and write down for the next person to interpret. The thing that happened with Cthulhu and, well, excuse me, Nyarlathotep was because of a book."

"The _Necronomicon,"_ Gary said. "I know." He paused, then asked, "Butters?"

"Heh, yeah, hi." I got out a grin and a shrug.

"You're in the League?"

"I'm, well—"

"Yes," Kenny answered, without looking at me.

Well, that was kinda nice. It felt at least a little like he'd validated Chaos's new presence among the rest. Possibly because they needed the numbers, now that Token was indisposed and Craig still wasn't back, or possibly to keep me on probation. I didn't know, but I'd accept whatever I could take.

I was in this for the good of the group. I'd gotten over myself. Chaos can benefit everyone.

"So who are you?"

Eric picked his head up to rest his chin in one hand, and to glower at me. "I don't know, Butters, that's a good question," he said flatly.

I shot him a glare of my own and answered, "I'm Professor Chaos."

"HOLD ON, _WHAT?"_ Clyde spat out, smacking a hand on the table.

The motion and reverberation caused his mask to move just a little… just to the edge of the table. Clyde yelped and dove to catch it, colliding with the floor as he did. My heart jumped at the motion. Gary backed up into his chair, then leaned with curiosity around the table to glance and try to see where Clyde had gone.

When Clyde stood back up, he heaved a sigh of relief, having caught the mask before it could hit the ground. He lifted his gaze only to look once at Bebe as he delicately set the mask back down on the table, then stared down at it as he said, "Sorry. I'm on edge."

"I think most of us are," Karen pointed out. She stepped up beside Clyde, and set a hand on his arm. "Here," she continued, "you sit down. Stan, Butters, Henrietta, can you guys all sit down, too?"

I took the suggestion immediately, again attempting to pat my hair down once I was re-seated. Stan and Henrietta followed suit, the latter with a bit of a disgruntled huff. Gary seemed to be glad that the Goth had backed away from him, but he was still glancing nervously around the table, piecing everything together.

"Look, guys, we can discuss names and things later," Kenny said, his eyes fixed on me without emotion. He passed his attention back to Gary, continuing, "The point is, I mentioned the _Book of Mormon._ Just, kind of in reference, while Damien was going on and on about Dante and what's known in Hell as the _Book of the Inferno._ He lashed out at me when I mentioned your sacred text, Gary. Any idea why?"

"Can I reiterate," I added softly, "that there's power in words, but also in how they're written…"

Kyle lifted one hand slightly off the table as he passed me a slight, knowing smile. "There's been mention of Jewish texts, too, Gary," he put in.

"That's right," Stan said under his breath, "the Leviathan. Or… something?"

Kyle nodded. "However it was that the _Book of the Inferno_ came to be written, Damien's definitely putting stock in the stories from my people, too." He paused, probably waiting for Eric to cut in with some jab at Kyle's Jewish heritage, alongside his prominent Ginger genetics, but Eric stared at his quarter. I saw his lips move as he made an un-voiced comment to himself, but that was all.

The room remained silent, which allowed everyone, Gary especially, time enough to think. As concerned as I was for the welfare of my friends, as concerned as I was that I might be shunned for choosing to re-adopt the name of Chaos for the purposes of our current mission, I tried to focus on the texts we were dealing with.

Every religion was right in some way, wasn't it? I'd always had a bit of a hard time deciding what to believe, as far as deities went, but I hadn't cared so much in my post-high school years about people and beasts and gods and demons as I had doctrines. I figured rules to live by were enough to make anyone's beliefs real enough.

Hell was certainly real, though, and while for some time I had considered that it was every physical Hell all at once, Damien seemed to be building off of one specific model. Meaning that there must be one specific way to bring it down. True Hell, however, existed in the same place as moral doctrines: in the mind. In dreams. In human nature.

Damien did have the means to create Hell on Earth. He had proven his ability to create false life out of iron sulfide; if he could make people, he could very well make creatures, too. There was no telling what kind of army he could build from the residue of the mines in the Rockies… but I held firm that there _had_ to be some way to breach the boundaries of this strange Carnival of events he was laying out before us. And I knew that a world attainable through the power of words could be destroyed by words as well.

"Plates," said Gary, breaking the silence.

"Right," Karen whispered.

"Sorry, what was that?" Ike asked, poised at the ready to take notes on his tablet.

"Golden plates." Gary was looking at his hands, still seeming out of his element; an air of dignity and his usual good-naturedness surrounded him. I knew the feeling. Gary was a person who simply liked helping others. Especially if that meant saving them. "The _Book of Mormon_ was originally text that the human eye can't read without the power of a certain stone, written on golden plates. Joseph Smith decoded the writing on the plates in order to write out God's word and share it with the people. The Mormons settled in a new promised land thanks to the teachings in our _Book,_ but…"

"But?" Kenny prompted.

Gary shivered. "I… suppose, if we were able to make a new promised land here on Earth… a-and, I mean, those plates were hidden for a very, very long time, I—" He shook his head as if to disagree with himself, but one look at Karen and he continued, "I suppose there could have been other plates. The… the Devil is always trying to one-up Heavenly Father, that much I know. There have been wars against Heaven before, I believe that much. But the worst that the Devil can do is not attack Heavenly Father directly, but His people. Temptation is everywhere, and to give into it is a sin."

"Oh, and Dante's _Inferno_ is full of it," said Henrietta. "Layers and layers of souls who were corrupted by one vice or another."

"Gary," Karen began, choosing her words carefully, "if a sacred text can be created from words on holy plates… you're saying there could have been a counterpart?"

"I don't know," Gary said, trembling. "I—I'm only speculating, and I don't want to believe it, but what I saw tonight proves that Hell is something very real to be afraid of, and if you think that the way something is written is so integral to the way it affects people…"

"The _Inferno_ is the opposite of Paradise," Kenny finished. "I think Damien might be wary of the _Book of Mormon_ because it goes even further than the rest of the Bible, or past the _Torah."_

"My people's _Book_ is supposed to renew hope in a world where religion is dying," said Gary.

"And that's exactly what the devil's son wouldn't want," Clyde nodded.

"So, Gary," Karen asked, "would you mind helping us out a little? This isn't just for us, either, it's for the people Damien has been holding hostage at this Carnival, people he's been making Golem clones out of, people who might wind up in Hell just because he wants them to. We don't know what it is they're going through since we can't access the Carnival yet, but one of the things we need to do is _free those people."_ Taking the hint, Kenny wrote that out as a bullet point on the whiteboard.

Eric spun his quarter and managed to stop it this time.

Gary, eyes fixed on Kenny's latest bullet point, nodded stiffly.

"Most of us in this room are going into that Carnival, but there's no knowing what we're going to be up against once we're there," Karen continued. "Would you mind being someone they can go to? You'll be guarded, of course… we can figure all of that out. You said the _Book_ is meant to restore hope. I think that's what these people need."

"Sure," Gary agreed, drumming his fingers against the table. "I can do that." He looked over at me, then, and smiled lightly as he added, "I liked what you said, Butters, about the power of words. I really believe that, too."

"And belief in something better than what Damien and Tenorman have been setting up is what we really need right now," Kenny added.

"Glad I could help," I said.

Clyde tensed and flashed a look at his mask.

And then, just as we were about to get more planning underway, Wendy let out a yelp. I gasped and turned toward her, to find that she was shocked pale, trembling, and staring down at her lap. "Wendy?" I asked.

"Wendy!" Bebe exclaimed. "What's wrong?"

Wendy bit her lip and stood quickly, scraping back her chair. She brought up her phone, the glow of which underlit her chin to cast a sideways shadow, and in a panicked tone, she got out, "I'm sorry," then turned and sped out of the room.

I called after her, but the first on his feet was Stan. "Shit," he said, "it's about Token, I know it is."

"Someone's gotta talk to her," I insisted.

"Someone has to bring her back," Kenny corrected. "We all hit a blow tonight, but we all need to _focus._ Every bit of help is encouraged. Stan, can you go talk to her?"

"Yeah, of course," he said. "We'll be right back."

"Well, but—" I started to interrupt. But Stan was already on his way out the door. I wanted to talk to Wendy, I wanted to console her; she was my closest friend. But I couldn't exactly argue Kenny's point:

"Stan saw everything that happened with the Leopard, Butters. We need you to fill us in on the Lion."

"Among other things," Clyde added.

Oh. Right.

"Dude, Clyde, we've got way fucking bigger things to worry about than Chaos right now," Kenny said, coming to my aid before I even needed to insist anything myself. It was welcome, of course, but a bit of a surprise. "Right?" Kenny asked me.

"Right," I said, "right, absolutely."

"You're in the League."

"Y-yes."

"And you're choosing to re-adopt Chaos as your identity within it."

"I—well, I kind of have to," I reasoned.

Eric spun his quarter and slammed his hand down on it. "You don't _have_ to," he spat, "but you're doin' it anyway. You didn't even _have_ to be Harmony in the first place. How do we know we can fuckin' trust you if you keep changing your mind?"

"I'm not _changing my mind,_ Eric," I fought, "I'm taking the best course of action in order to do my best work on this mission! Nothing is _changing,_ I'm just using the right methods right now."

"Right, the right methods like when—"

"Stop," Karen commanded without lashing out. "No arguments. Cartman, if you take offense to this, or Clyde, if you do, can you at least make it not a problem for the sake of this meeting? Butters has proved himself an asset to this League, and I for one think that, from what I've heard, Chaos's talents are pretty well-suited for what we're up against. Now, can we please be kind to our guest tonight, fill him in, and move on?"

I thanked Karen for standing up for me, and knew that I'd be thanking her again. And her words were effective, as many words are. The others came to the consensus that the name Chaos did not necessarily mean that I'd fall off the deep end again, which was much appreciated. I'd never been happier to have gained the respect of everyone in the Shadow League. Becoming Chaos again was my decision to face our threats in the way they needed to be faced: head-on, no-holds-barred.

I still had plenty of ways by which I could fix things, and I had my score to settle with Disarray. But my thoughts, as the meeting continued to let Gary in on more of the mission specifics, turned straight to Wendy. I don't pray too awful much, but the constant talk of it that night made me whisper a couple little hopes for her into my hands while the others continued speaking.

– – –

_Stan_

It was a good thing I'd chosen to chase Wendy out of the meeting room—she was reaching for the front door when I caught up. "Wendy!" I called after her. "Wendy, hold up, stop."

"I have to go," she blurted out. "I have to—I have to go, I—"

"Nope, no, come on, he's in Denver right now," I reminded her. "We're all worried, Wendy, but each and every one of us has a job right here."

Wendy shook her head, but retracted from reaching for the doorknob. I was a step behind her when she turned. I saw hell in her eyes.

She grabbed onto my shoulders and dug her fingers in, and, trying to control her breathing, managed to ask, "Is he all right? Stan, is he all right? Is he gonna be all right?"

"Well, he—"

I couldn't finish even thinking out what I was going to tell her, since Wendy lost it at precisely that instant, and began sobbing. "Oh, shit," she coughed out. "Oh, shit, oh… shit, I'm sorry, Stan, oh… just…. I…"

"Ssh," I coaxed her, patting her back. "Come on, girl, deep breath. Let's go sit, okay?"

Wendy nodded, but skipped over my instruction of deep breathing. I helped her take her uneven steps into the front room, where I then sat her on the sofa toward the right arm. I asked her to hold her position just long enough to rush to the bathroom and grab a box of tissues; when I returned to the room, Wendy was clutching one of the sofa pillows to her chest and trying not to cry.

"Here," I said, offering up the tissues. Wendy nodded to thank me, and pulled out three to cover and wipe her face.

"I'm sorry," she said unsteadily. "I'm such a fucking mess, I didn't think I'd be this much of a fucking mess…"

"It's okay," I assured her, "it'll be okay."

"Ugh, I don't _get_ it," Wendy choked out, frowning at herself. "I just—I _hurt._ So fucking bad. I want—I just want—I don't even know what I'm saying, Stan, I'm sorry."

I let out a light sigh, and started rubbing her back. She caught the hint, and let herself cry. Tucking her legs up onto the sofa cushion, she pressed her face into the gathered wad of tissues she was holding, and muffled something out into it. Before I could ask for clarification, she drew back slightly to repeat, "I've gotta stop doing this."

"What?" I wondered.

"Falling in love and then fucking up."

I stopped rubbing her back, and inched away a bit so I could turn Wendy to face me. This was not her usual attitude… but, then again, I had absolutely zero knowledge of Wendy and Token's breakup. It had seemed like they were together one minute, apart the next. Neither had been awkward about it, at least not toward me. Wendy had gone to her group of girl friends for whatever therapy she'd needed, and Token had not really talked about it either way.

Of course, Wendy's statement had brought to mind the years that she and I had dated on and off, which played a huge role in the friendship I had with her now. While I knew precious little of her California college experience, we were still friends who, on vacations, could pick up a conversation almost anywhere, at any time.

It just hadn't been about this. And for Wendy to seem so pushed over the edge that night, I had a feeling I knew where her train of thought was leading her.

"You're not a fuck-up," I told her, firmly. "Wendy." She had yet to make real eye contact with me. _"Wendy,"_ I stressed.

She shook her head.

"I fucked up, Stan, it was my fault, not his," Wendy explained through attempted control of her tears. "I got—I don't know, distracted?"

"Wendy, it happens."

"Not to you and Kyle! Not to Bebe and Clyde! Not to Kenny and—"

"Oh, stop it," I encouraged her. "This isn't getting you anywhere. Let's slow down, okay? Look me in the eyes, Wendy, and tell me that we can have a conversation. There's a lot going on right now. We're all stressed, we're all worried, and you know what else? We're all friends. So look at me; talk to me. I want to help."

I hated seeing Wendy look as though she wanted to give up. She was too strong for that. Wendy was an asset to the League, and a wonderful person to call a friend, thinking so much about the needs of others, and the steps she could take to make one portion of the world a little brighter.

Everyone I associated with in the League possessed a kind of admirable resilience, which was one quality that I knew would keep Token going even after the accident that night. But I was bothered by the fact that even I had started questioning how well our individual strengths were still holding up as part of a whole. If Token did suffer worse from the attack than I was thinking, if Wendy really did break down out of nerves, if Cartman had really become completely shut out of reality now that his mother had been taken hostage… fuck, if Kenny became lost in nightmares—if any of that happened, the rest of us would be lost. This wasn't a time to go it alone; this mission would only work as a group effort, with all the help we could get.

Wendy finally looked at me, dabbed her eyes with her tissue again, and said a broken, "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," I requested gently, treading my tone lightly so that I wouldn't risk her getting upset again. "I know how much you must hurt, and I know that feeling like this can really take someone out of reality for a little while. I don't want to see you give up, girl, so I'm going to make a request, okay?"

"Sure."

"Is there anything," I wondered, squeezing her shoulders, "_anything,_ Wendy, that you can tell me about you and Token? About what happened?"

"Stan, I…"

"Please. You're upset, I know. Sometimes it's good to talk it out. _Have_ you talked to anyone?" I wondered. "Bebe? Marjorine?"

"Well—" Wendy took in and let out a deep breath, grabbed another tissue, and admitted, "I talked to one person. Because she was the first one I saw when I got home after I fucked up, and I spilled a little, but not all of it."

"I'm glad you talked to someone," I told her. "Who?"

Wendy choked. "Red."

I sank back, while Wendy added another tissue to her collecting wad and rubbed it at the corners of her eyes. Her dark eyeshadow smudged a little when she rubbed, giving her an even more drained, tired appearance. Not wanting to say nothing, but knowing we were treading delicate ground, I simply got out, "Oh."

Wendy nodded.

"Anyway," she said, to avoid the subject of Red and her recent, alarming disappearance, "some of my friends out at school know. Basics, but… yeah. There wasn't all that much to tell. I fucked up."

"Stop saying that," I urged. "Wendy, it's not doing you any good to just keep repeating to yourself that you fucked up."

"But I did fuck up," she insisted. "I destroyed the best thing that's ever happened to me for something that looked like… oh, shit, Stan, I don't even know. I cheated."

"Okay," I said. "It happens."

"Twice," Wendy added. "And to make it worse, I lied." She looked up at me with glassed-over eyes, and said, "I'm not a very good liar, Stan. I wasn't even a good cheater."

"Why did you? If I can ask that."

"Remember what Gary just said in there, about temptation? That's all it was. I took a gamble, and I shouldn't have."

"Wendy…"

She coughed out a slight sob. "Sometimes life deals you a perfect hand. Keep it, and you win. I played my cards all wrong, and then I was out of the game completely. And I lost."

"Doesn't mean you can't get back what you had," I suggested. "You need to talk to him, if you want him back."

"After what I did?" Wendy sniffed. "I don't deserve him."

I sighed, and began rubbing her back again. Wendy's breathing began to even out a bit; I knew she couldn't have believed, really, that she'd done so much wrong. She was shocked, shaken—she needed time to decompress. "Of course you do," I said, keeping a friendly tone.

"I don't know, Stan…"

"You do," I repeated. "Of course you do, don't try to convince yourself you don't. Look, I wonder all the time if I deserve Kyle, and I know for a fact…" I felt myself get quieter due to the nature of the subject— "I know Kenny says that a lot about Red…"

Wendy hung her head. "Oh, God," she breathed out. "God, I hope we find her. I'm so worried. I'm worried for her, I'm worried for Kenny, I'm just… I don't know, I'm too worried about everyone and everything."

"And that's just you, girl," I said, patting her back. "Even when you're not on duty, you're a total hero, Wendy, but I do think you're doing a lot, and thinking a lot. I do think you need to talk to Token, rather than just be sick with wondering what his angle is."

"You think?"

"Absolutely. Talk to him. You'll feel better, I promise."

Finally, Wendy made the effort to smile. "Thanks, Stan," she sighed. "You're right, I do get worked up."

She wasn't the only one, though.

"Stan?"

"What's up?"

"You seriously wonder if you deserve Kyle?" Wendy asked, laughing a little.

"I think everyone thinks that about the person they're with, at least once," I shrugged.

"Yeah, but you guys are in it for the long haul," Wendy supposed, glancing up at me before focusing on the tissue in her hands, "aren't you?"

"Hmm?" I wondered.

"You and Kyle."

My heart skipped a little.

Nobody had actually brought 'that' up in conversation with me; I was usually the one attempting to drop hints, just to see if we could lay out the facts and probabilities. I was assuming, yeah, that Kyle and I would stay together after college. We'd moved in together at school, but hadn't really talked about that next step. I suppose I was just banking on us keeping our life together going. Call me lustful or idealistic, but I wanted the whole stupid package: a place to ourselves, a life routine we could settle into. Yeah, I wanted to be 'in it for the long haul.' I hadn't really thought about any alternative.

While, "I hope so," was all I answered Wendy, the question did kind of eat at my mind. I knew that Kyle would probably be a little too worked up now to discuss any of it, but I had to remind myself to at least be more direct or more obvious soon.

Wendy dabbed the corners of her eyes with her tissue again, then sniffed and disposed of the pillowsoft paper into the trash can near the minifridge. "Red wants to marry Kenny," she said. "Did you know that?"

My breath stalled. "No," I said, "I had no clue. I don't talk to her as much as Kenny. And he, like… I have no idea."

"Well, she does, and I really hope she tells him. When he finds her. Which he will."

"Of course he will." I repeated that in my head a few times. If anyone deserved anyone right now, those two had to find each other; that much I knew.

Wendy gathered up her phone again, and rested her head on my shoulder. "I think I'm thinking about that a lot, too," she sighed. "Bebe and Clyde are engaged, Red wants to be, sorry to assume about you guys, but I'm guessing you're… I don't know, sorry, I shouldn't assume. Just—then there's me, messing shit up when I want something solid."

"Step one is to just have a talk with him," I reminded her. "That won't hurt anything at all, I promise."

"Mmhmm."

"What'd your text say?" I wondered. "It's from Craig, right?"

"It… it's from Token," Wendy told me. She slid on her phone's screen and called up her latest message.

Token's little blue iPhone message bubble read, _Hey. Using my dad's phone. No pressure or anything but if you want, here's the number in my room. Sorry about the setback. Surgery tomorrow. _

"Call him," I urged.

"Yeah… yeah, I want to."

I grinned. "You ready to talk to him?" I urged her, nudging her head up.

"I'm not sure, to be honest," Wendy answered, sitting back, "but right now, I really want to take my chances."

"So go for it," I said, keeping positive. "Want me to stick around?"

"Sure, if—"

She got no further before we were both jostled to our feet by a knock on the door. Wendy clenched her phone and nodded to me; she'd put her own call on hold in case she needed to contact someone else right away, depending on who we'd find on the other side of the door. After all, Disarray had somehow made his way in to deliver letters to Kenny and Karen. We could make no assumptions that a knock meant an ally.

I stepped carefully toward the door, and Wendy positioned herself between me and the kitchenette, where Kenny kept plenty of makeshift weapons close enough to the hallway in case of intrusion. No precautions were necessary, though, when I opened the door to find Craig standing on the other side.

"Dude," I said, hurrying him in, "what's going on?"

Craig closed and locked the door behind him, and said in a single breath, "Token got air-lifted to Denver, so I came back here. He's getting some crazy fucked-up surgery for a super fucked-up… thing, with his leg, it was really, really—you didn't want to see it, _I_ didn't want to see it, he's gonna be fine, but it's still fucked up."

"Yeah," I got in.

"Is he okay?" Wendy asked, rushing up to Craig. "Is… I mean, he texted me, so… also, are _you _okay? How fucked up is fucked up?"

I'd been hearing that phrase a little too much that evening, but it was more or less the only way to sum up all sentiments at once.

Craig twisted his mouth to one side, then groaned and rubbed his hands back through his hair, underneath the latest incarnation of the same blue chullo hat his sister constantly gifted him. Sweat caked his short bangs onto the tip of his forehead, and the redness of his skin at his hairline suggested he'd been making multiple grabs at that spot out of stress all evening. "I really only wanna talk about it once," he said. "Is everyone else still here? Or at least, like, Kenny?"

"Yeah, man… yeah," I said. "Dude, take a breather if you have to, grab some water or something."

Craig nodded, gave Wendy an apologetic look, then walked past us into the small kitchen, where I heard him open the fridge for a bottle of water. Wendy trembled when I placed a hand on her shoulder for comfort, and she looked again at the text message from Token.

"If he's really hurt, he might want to rest," she said in a whisper. "I'll call him. I want to. I will. Just… after I hear a little more. But I really want to talk to him. I'll regret it if I don't."

"You going to be okay?" I checked.

Wendy, face once again illuminated by her phone, only nodded.

When we returned to the meeting room, Craig in tow, the first thing that I noticed was a look of unease in Kyle's expression. He was picking at a spot on the table in front of him, and looking in the basic direction of the whiteboard, but I could tell he was staring off into space, over-thinking something. I patted Wendy on the back and returned to my spot at the table, and while Kenny said an almost too-official, "Hello," to Craig, I slid into my chair and set my right hand over Kyle's left.

"Hey," I whispered, getting him out of his slight trance, "everything okay?"

Kyle hummed out a soft sigh. "Later," he assured me. "Can I stay with you tonight? Do you work tomorrow?"

Fuck if I could remember even what day it was at that point, but whether any of us were scheduled to work the next few days or not, I had a feeling we'd all be requesting some time off. "Yeah, of course," I said. "But, really, are you gonna be all right?"

Kyle squeezed my hand, but wasn't even able to give a response, since the room was hushed silent to hear Craig's news.

Wendy was staring at Craig with a desperate, expectant look, and the only thing I could hear in the room after Kenny's question of, "So what's the latest?" was the tapping of someone's heel on the floor. Given his jittery position, it was no shock to find out that the source of the sound was Gary.

"News is," said Craig, straightforward but shaken, "Token's going into surgery tomorrow. His knee got really fucked up, guys, like, parts of the bones ripped and shattered."

Kyle, who despite everything he'd seen in his life still had the weakest stomach of almost anyone I knew, buckled, and I knew that the only reason he wasn't verbally objecting to Craig's descriptions was out of fear for getting sick. I let him squeeze my hand till it was numb as an alternative, and I asked Craig in hopes of skirting around the gory details, "Are they—they're not, you know, taking his leg…?"

"Fuck," I heard Kenny mutter. Clyde stared at his bloodied mask, and did not even respond to Bebe when she leaned in to say something into his ear. They had to stop blaming themselves, Kenny and Clyde both, but there was little I could say at the moment to help them see reason in the fact that some outcomes are unavoidable.

"No," Craig assured us. Wendy looked as though she'd just learned how to breathe. "Not the whole leg. Last thing I talked to his dad about before I left was a couple specifics, like, he's getting a knee replacement, I know that much, and they've got him down for this new tech thing, some kind of hybrid computerized symbiote alloy, whatever that means."

"A computerized symbiote?" Ike repeated, black eyes bright at the mention of the new technology. "Holy shit, if that works out the way I've heard they've been testing it, he's not gonna need too much physical therapy before he's back on his feet. How the hell'd he get that? That's, like… fucking _soldiers_ are wait-listed for that."

"Yeah, well, that's kinda what Token is," Kenny reminded him.

"Plus, his parents know the whole board at that hospital," Craig added.

"So, it's good news?" Butters voiced.

"It better be," Craig answered, at the same time Ike chimed in, "It's gotta be."

From her corner seat, Wendy breathed out a whispered, "Thank God."

I'm not sure how many of the others heard her, but other than myself, I saw that one person did: Gary. He set his glance on Wendy for a moment, then cleared his throat and settled into his chair.

Now, there was only the matter of the delicately-wrapped package in the middle of the table to take care of. The Coon had had the right instincts back on the field: it sure as hell looked like a bomb, and while that was something to be expected of drug lords and mob bosses and the like, we were dealing with someone who relished human plight. Damien had been telling the truth… he wasn't going to get rid of us so easily.

"So," Karen began, gesturing toward the box. "Who wants to do the honors?"

"I have a feeling I'm the _only_ one that thing would blow up on," Kenny remarked.

"Here," I offered, standing, "I'll do it."

I dug into my pocket for my keys, and when the box was passed in my direction, I slid out the clippers on the Swiss Army knife I kept attached to my car key. With three careful cuts, I slid off the twine and packaging; Kyle brushed it off to the side, shuddering somewhat as he did.

Underneath the wrapping was a simple, matte black box, measuring a rather obvious six-by-six-by-six, which was closed with the same red seal bearing the _T_ decal that the letters had been closed with in wax. Switching out the small scissors for the knife, I broke the seal and lifted back the lid.

The box was filled with red-dyed newspaper, charred around the edges and acting as packaging. Lying atop the newspaper was an envelope addressed to no one, and which was not sealed. I extracted the envelope with some trepidation, and found it to be heavier than it looked. When Kenny asked what it was, I opened it to find a single sheet of folded paper, bearing a note, and with a small USB drive attached by red twine to the bottom.

"I'm guessing this is for you," I said, removing the USB drive and sliding it over to Ike.

Ike caught the drive, itself a rather standard piece of technology, bearing no features that would define it as anything exquisite, and studied it closely. "Timmy?" Timmy asked cautiously.

"Nope. No bugs," Ike answered. "At least not on the outside. If they didn't bomb us, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be interested in bugging us, either."

"That's up for debate," Craig said.

Ike shot him an unimpressed look which Craig took without comment, then asked me, "Are there instructions on that note?"

I glanced over the paper the drive had been attached to, and scanned the note:

_INSTRUCTIONS FOR ADMITTANCE:_

_ Be advised, all ticket holders marked below, to the policies regarding the Red Carnival, as per the Ringleaders' orders. Our gates open in preview of coming attractions for the community this Friday, and will be open from sundown through the duration of the evening. Gates will not reopen again for ten days, at which time we presume construction will at last be complete._

_ Ticket and token numbers must be matched to the proper entrant._

"Then," I said, after reading the instructions aloud, "it has a number next to a bunch of our names. It doesn't say anything about the USB drive."

"Then what the fuck is it?" Ike wondered, turning it over and back in his fingers.

"You have an iPad, find out," Cartman muttered.

"Hold on," said Karen. "Let's just see if there's anything else in that box other than tickets. Stan, can I see the box? If you read off the names in order, I'll pass the tickets out."

Kenny, still at the whiteboard, gave us the go-ahead, and created a separate box, near Henrietta's listing of the three beasts we'd already fought, in which to write down our names and ticket numbers. I slid the box across the table to Karen; Gary's nervous foot-tapping started up again when she removed the red newspaper.

"Before I start, I just want to see how this adds up," said Karen. "Everyone who has a ticket already, stand up."

"I want to archive these, too," Bebe added. She took her place near Timmy and Ike, and Timmy called up a record on the overhead computer of the digital archive they had collected thus far, containing photos of the Golems and the Carnival posters. Timmy then brought a camera onto the table while Bebe connected it to the computer by two strings of wires. "If there are any weird hints on your tickets now, we should keep them in the archive, just in case that can help."

"Good call," Clyde complimented her, flashing a nervous smile. Bebe returned the kind gesture, then nodded to Karen to continue.

Karen cleared her throat. "Ike?"

"Hang on a sec," her boyfriend said hurriedly, his black eyes scanning the screen to double-check that the program he'd selected was up and running properly. I only noticed at that moment that he'd plugged the USB drive into his tablet, which he'd detached from the main computer.

"Dude," Kenny admonished him, "I said wait on that drive."

"Yeah, I know, but—"

"Ike!" Karen slapped one hand down on the table, causing Ike—and jittery Gary—to jump. When Ike lifted his head to look at her, I noticed a hint of guilt in his expression, and a tome of anger in Karen's. "You were the first one to get a ticket. Care to be the first to stand?" she prompted.

Keeping cautious, Ike stood, and, leaning over the table, slid his ticket forward a couple of inches. Timmy shot both sides of the slim red paper slip, then continued around the table to the right.

"Ike's number three on this list, though," I noticed, consulting the note from Damien's box. "Who else has a ticket, again?"

"Well, I didn't get a ticket," said Butters, "I got more of a token." He blanched while the rest of us winced at his choice of a word. Wendy bit her lip. "Coin," Butters corrected.

He rolled it over to Bebe. Cartman spun the quarter he'd been incessantly spinning since the meeting started, and I half expected him to flick it at Butters' gold coin, but he merely watched it go by. As Timmy took photos of the front and back, I read off, "Butters is listed seventh."

"Out of how many?" Kenny wondered, starting up his list.

"Ten."

"Fuckin' devils and numerology," Henrietta said, mostly to herself. She was picking at a hole in her black lace fingerless gloves, probably attempting to find something to do while she was not allowed to smoke. "Of course it's ten."

"Mine says nine," Kenny added. He gave his ticket to Clyde and asked him to walk it down to Bebe, which was probably best for Clyde at that moment, given that he'd hardly looked away from his mask all evening.

"Anyone else?" Bebe wondered, as Timmy shot photos of Kenny's ticket, and Ike passed back Butters' coin.

When nobody answered, Karen asked me to begin reading off the list. She'd taken from the box yet another envelope, again unaddressed and un-sealed. It clinked somewhat, suggesting that Butters was not the only one who'd be entering with a coin.

"First on the list is Craig," I read off. "Technically. It says _Endgame._ For that matter, Ike's does say _Red Serge,_ Kenny's _Mysterion."_

"Let me guess," said Butters, rubbing his thumb on one side of his coin.

"You got it," I confirmed with the list. Damien, in his pompous, flowery ink-black script, had indeed planned for _Professor Chaos_ to be given the seventh token of entrance. Harmony wouldn't have been able to enter, either way. It had to be Chaos.

"Thought so."

"Then I guess it's a good idea you've already made up your mind," Wendy mentioned. Butters nodded, but said nothing else. Kenny made a note to write everyone's League identities, rather than proper names, on the board.

"Why'm I first on the list?" Craig wondered, as Karen walked to him and handed him his red paper ticket. "Why not, like, Kyle?"

"Maybe it's by ability," Kyle offered.

"Yeah, but, then, why would I be third?" Ike said. "I might be full-time in the League, but I can't exactly shoot lasers outta my eyes like Craig can."

"Lasers," Gary whispered to himself. "Right. Okay."

"Let's just keep going," Karen suggested, "we can speculate later. Who's next, Stan?"

"Um…" My heart skipped when I read the next name, even though I knew it was coming eventually. I just wasn't prepared to see it yet. "I am."

I listened to the squeak of Kenny's dry-erase marker as he wrote _Toolshed_ on the whiteboard, but I looked down at Kyle, who sat straight-backed yet uneasy. I set one hand down on the table, and he covered it with his, but that was all either of us could, at the moment, do in the way of support. For all we knew, the list numbers were arbitrary.

Karen walked around and set a ticket in front of me. For all intents and purposes, it looked much like Ike's, made of the same red paper, with the same old-fashioned lettering. Prominently in the lefthand corner was the Roman numeral _II,_ in fancier script than Damien's handwriting, which was a feat in and of itself; it was just a step away from being something out of an illuminated manuscript.

Clearing my throat, I went on. "So, anyway, Ike's third, and… Mosquito. Clyde, you're fourth."

To his immediate dismay, Clyde was given a coin rather than a ticket. He placed it down on the table, letting Timmy take angled photos of it, and secured one arm around Bebe's waist. He then made every effort to look everywhere but at the token.

Karen then had to return to our side of the table when I read off, "Kyle's fifth."

He didn't touch his ticket, Karen simply placed it down in front of him, the same way she'd done with mine. Kyle's differed from the other paper tickets, which was a surprise given how prized he and Red had been to the Carnival's early efforts as carrying most prominently the Ginger gene. His ticket, instead, was black, with embossed white lettering. Only the Roman numeral _V _was printed in red. Like Clyde, Kyle tried his best not to look at his ticket.

"Who's next?" Karen asked.

"Actually," I read off, "you are."

Kenny looked more unnerved than Karen herself did. Karen held back any signs of judgment, and pulled from the envelope the ticket with her corresponding Roman numeral. The reverse of Kyle's, hers was on white paper, while the numeral was in red. She passed it to Timmy to be archived, then requested to move on.

"So, Butters is seventh, and then… Wendy," I read.

Cartman frowned at his quarter and spun it around again. There was only one spot left to fill, and his name hadn't been listed yet; I could more or less understand his aggravation.

Shaking, Wendy accepted her token, the third of only three coins among the rest of the tickets. Just as Karen was about to move on to ask for the final name, however, Wendy said, "Wait, something's wrong with mine."

"What's up?" Bebe wondered.

"It comes apart."

Wendy stood, and demonstrated her unique coin: it was the same size as the ones Butters and Clyde had been given, but the ridges on one side served as a hinge, revealing that the token itself was indeed two thinner coins fastened together.

"That's weird," Henrietta said.

"And I'm worried, if that's coming from you," said Wendy. Henrietta looked unimpressed, and Wendy quickly covered, "No, no, no, Henrietta, I'm sorry, no, I didn't mean _you're_ weird, not at all, I meant… I meant that you know so much about the numerology and everything, it's weird if there's something different that goes against what you were expecting."

"Yeah, I know." Henrietta had picked through her lace so that her entire palm showed; some of her black nail polish had flaked off and was clinging to the lines in her hand, which proved only one thing to me. Her palms were sweating. Henrietta was nervous. Her face didn't show it, but her mannerisms did. "Maybe it's good for one extra entrance."

"It still says _eight_ on it, though," Wendy noted.

"We can keep the extra behind, here, just in case," said Bebe. "They're giving us room for backup."

"Then we should try not to use it," Kenny advised. "But I agree it should stay back. Wendy?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine with that," she concurred. She slid her coin down to Timmy, and Bebe unfastened the second coin from the first.

"Last one?" Karen prompted me.

"Last one," I read, consulting the note. As anticipated. "Cartman."

"Fuckin' _good,"_ he grumbled, holding out his hand to take his version of the ticket from Karen. "I's starting to think they'd leave me out on purpose so I couldn't…"

"Couldn't what?" asked Wendy.

Cartman paused, then folded his fingers over the ticket, of a color more like blood than the other reds, and said quietly, "Find her."

"Your mom," Butters guessed.

Cartman's silence was enough of an agreement to that statement.

"Anything else on the letter?" Kenny wondered.

Unfortunately, there was more. After the list of names was the instruction:

_Admittance granted in order of attendant listing. No exceptions will be made without the explicit consent of one of the Ringleaders._

They were splitting us up. That accounted for the arbitrary numbering, I guessed. With only the exception of Wendy and Butters being close friends and being numbered one after the other, nobody on the list was going to enter directly behind someone they worked closely with. Karen and Kenny were three numbers apart; same went for me and Kyle. Kyle and Ike were separated by two slots. Clyde and Craig were off by three, Butters and Cartman were off by three. Token, I realized, had not been listed at all, meaning that his incapacitation had been planned. That being evident, however, it seemed pretty clear who the top choice for Wendy's extra coin was… if he was up for taking it by the time he got back.

Cartman declared the rule to be _bullshit._ Everyone agreed.

Since there was nothing that could immediately be done, in terms of storming the gates or anything along those lines, Kenny chose to call the meeting to a close, in order to let Gary ask any extra questions, and allow Timmy and Bebe time to update the archive.

When Kyle and I were making our way to the door, I checked in with Gary, to offer him a ride home. When he passed on the offer, I couldn't hide a pretty satisfied smile. "You're sticking around?" I hypothesized.

"Yeah," said Gary, nodding. He looked pale, but determined. "I can't exactly go back to work tomorrow as it is, and I guess part of my work has been helping you guys, anyway. I'm still processing. I kind of want to talk it out with Karen."

"Makes sense," I said. "Sorry again about the circumstances."

"It's fine. It's been great working with you so far, Toolshed."

"Likewise," I grinned.

Gary managed a half-smile. Nodding to Kyle, he added, "And the Human Kite."

Kyle offered a polite nod in return, said an honest, "Thanks for your help, dude, g'night," and tugged me toward the door as Gary was clearing his throat. He then picked up his pace, rushing us out as effectively as he could.

"What's up?" I wondered, once we were well on our way out.

Kyle shook his head. "Can we just go home?" he requested. "Your house. Wherever we're going."

"Sure."

Nothing else was said until we made it to my car, passing by, in the Blacks' large garage, the row of others: Bebe's Mini, Wendy's sturdy old Bug, Token's SUV. In the back of my head, I saw a brief flash of memory from earlier in the evening, at the pit. I wondered about Token's surgery, about his state of well-being, about whether he'd be able to be active again, drive again; walk again.

All that just because he lacked the Gene that Tenorman had been targeting? Because he wasn't laden with some kind of curse? I wondered about Ike, about whether he'd be attacked for lack of the Gene as well.

Once we were both in, I shifted my car into drive and eased out onto the road, leaving the mansion behind us. Once we were a fair distance away, I tried again, "I mean it, are you all right? Looks like something's bugging you."

Kyle was staring out the window to his right, probably counting down buildings that we passed to know how much further we had to go until our destination. "On a scale of one to my mother," he mumbled, "how obvious am I when I'm angry?"

"What? Kyle." I tried to catch his attention, but he did not shift his position. "Is that a real question? I mean, come on."

"Am I being unreasonable?"

I increased my speed somewhat, so we could get out of the damn car soon if _this_ was going to be the topic of discussion. "I don't know what you have to be unreasonable about," I said. "That question came out of nowhere." I paused; he said nothing. "Kyle. What happened when I was out of the room?"

Kyle sighed. He rested his chin in one hand, then winced from the angle at which he'd set his arm, readjusted, and said, "We were catching Gary up on stuff. Totally fine for most of it, until Cartman quit the silence act."

"Ugh," I commented, "what'd he say? You know he's just angry about… well, lots of shit."

"I get that," said Kyle, "I just—there's a lot of shit about Cartman that I try to forget most of the time."

"Like how he has a history for being an asshole," I guessed.

"Like the fact that he's an asshole, yeah," Kyle repeated.

"You forget that."

"I try to."

"What'd he say?" I wondered again. "If it was about Gingers—"

"I mean, it kind of was…"

"Kyle."

"It was about blood ties in general, okay?!" Kyle lashed out. "We were explaining how the whole Ginger thing got started, and how Gary and his family are tied into it, and then about Kenny and Clyde and… well, and you…"

"Me?"

"The Marsh thing," said Kyle. "You know, that Wilcox talked about?"

I shivered. "Right…" I recalled. The reason I was so susceptible to nightmares even beyond the disappearance of R'lyeh. I did not want to know what that Dagon entity was, or how tied to the unknown out in the ocean my bloodline was. I did want the nightmares to stop, but not at the cost of learning something that would haunt me forever no matter what.

"So we got talking about blood ties, and wondering how Craig's ability and that Incan prophecy might factor into any of this at all, and so of course I started explaining my quirk, and then—ugh, it's…"

By this time, I had pulled into my driveway. Kyle ticked his head toward the house. "My arms really fucking hurt," he said. "My head fucking hurts, too. Can we finish this inside?"

I agreed, and when I turned off the car, I pocketed my keys and walked around to open the passenger side door. Kyle smiled feebly in thanks; still worried, I kissed his cheek and led him indoors. My parents were predictably asleep, and I locked the front door behind us as Kyle and I claimed the kitchen for the time being.

The ceiling light hummed when I clicked it on, a sound only drowned out by the rush of water from the sink into the large serving bowl I borrowed from my mother's entertainment ware. Kyle accepted my offer to add ice to the already cold water, and I made up a station at the kitchen table with the large bowl and a handful of dish cloths. A quick trip to the first aid kit my parents kept around from my high school football days let me procure a couple new wrap bandages for Kyle's arms, but remembering the ointment Henrietta had come up with originally, I asked upon returning to the table, "Need anything else? Ibuprofin, or, like, cream or anything?"

"Just cold water should do it for now," my boyfriend said, both arms already submerged into the ice-cold water, "but thanks."

"Let me know," I said. I slid into the seat across from him, set the bandages beside the dish cloths, and added, "I've gotta look out for you."

Kyle was glancing down at his arms, but I heard the genuine smile in his tone when he asked, "You have to, or you like to?"

"Both." He flashed me a slight glance, then focused on his slowly-healing arms again. "How're your arms?"

"Irritating," Kyle said. "But, you know."

"Speaking of irritating," I transitioned, "want to fill me in? What the hell did Cartman say to you?"

Kyle winced, and took his right arm out of the bowl. I made a grab for one of the dish cloths, but he'd grabbed one as well; he motioned for me to dampen the cloth I'd taken up, so I obliged, and once he'd dried the bothersome part of his arm, Kyle held it out to me, allowing me to apply more focused relief with the wet cloth.

"You okay?" I checked yet again.

"Mmhmm."

"What's on your mind?" I wondered.

"I never questioned where my quirk came from," said Kyle. "I just know it's there, and I just know it's a part of me, and how to use it."

"You've always had it," I said. I wrung out the cloth and dabbed it gently on the most raw area of Kyle's right forearm. The burn was in that awful, scabbing stage, a grotesque mix of white and red in the zig-zag pattern of the coil that had done the damage. The appearance meant that the scars were healing, though, but I could only imagine how badly they must hurt.

"You think so?" Kyle wondered.

"I know so," I said. I looked up to catch his expression, and Kyle did not seem convinced at all. "Why?" I wondered. "You don't?"

"I don't know. The… 'blood equals power' thing."

"It's not a Ginger trait, or else Red could do it," I reasoned.

"Not that." Kyle winced again. "Here's what's bothering me, Stan. Cartman thinks it came from him."

I felt my eyebrows knit together in disgust at the idea. "Dude, you're not related."

"No, but he's been cursed since…"

"Cursed-_ish,"_ I admitted. "I repeat, Kyle: you're not related."

"Yeah, well, he reminded me of something else."

"Which is?"

"Remember in third grade, Stan, when I got sick?" Kyle asked, steadying his breath as best he could. "Really sick? When I needed a kidney transplant?"

"Yeah…?"

"I still have his kidney."

"But that's not—"

Aggravated, Kyle pushed the dish of cold water to the side, set his elbows on the table, and grabbed at his wirey hair, placing his forehead on the heels of his palms. His eyes snapped shut fast, and when his shoulders raised and tensed, I knew that he was bursting with so much stress it was taking much of his energy to try not to cry. "What if it happened in the blood transfusion when we were eight, Stan?" he said, through clenched teeth. "What if I'm not supposed to be like this at all? What if I have something _he_ was meant to have because of the botched curse his dad tried?"

"No," I said quickly, before I'd even formulated anything else to say on the matter. If there was one thing Cartman did well, it was exploit sensitive subjects, and he'd always managed to really hit the nail on the head when it came to making Kyle uneasy.

I shifted, and pulled up a chair directly next to Kyle, placed my left hand on his upper left arm, and rubbed my right hand in a soothing circular pattern between his shoulders. "He honestly said that?"

"Twice." Kyle was shaking now. "Stan, what if—"

"No," I proclaimed more firmly. "No, Kyle, honest to God, don't even think about that. It's bullshit. It's Cartman talking bullshit."

"But—"

"Kyle, your quirk—listen to me, what you're able to do, that is all you," I told him, remaining calm. "It's an extension of you. I keep saying that, and I need you to believe that, all right? Don't let him upset you, that's all he's trying to do."

Kyle smacked his hands down on the table, cringed from the sting of the action, and stared me down as he demanded, "Then where did it come from, Stan? We all know where Kenny's curse came from originally, we saw the prophecy about Craig ourselves as kids. If my… _thing_ isn't the result of some curse or great cosmic fuck-up, then how'd it happen to me?"

His questions were, of course, valid concerns, and nothing we had ever really talked about before. The quirk had not been a subject of conversation for so long, the origin of it had simply fallen into unspoken territory. I had my theories, though. I'd always had my theories.

To calm him down, I set my hands down on his shoulders, squeezed gently once, and leaned in as I said, "Can I tell you what I think?" Kyle gave a subtle nod. "I don't think it's a curse. Rule that out. I can definitely tell you it's not from anyone else's blood. No one could lay a curse or some latent ability on you without you noticing, Kyle, I know you'd be able to sense some kind of difference. Okay?"

"Okay," he said doubtfully.

"Kyle, I think you created it yourself," I declared. "Just from being so aware. You know how to use your mind in a way that I don't, that no one else does. It's hyperawareness, right? And it just got a nudge up to the level it's at now. It didn't come from anywhere but you. All right?"

He did puzzle over the idea for a moment, and ultimately gave in.

"I wish you'd been in the room," Kyle admitted, relaxing somewhat. "I wouldn't've been stressing about it this whole time."

"It's okay."

"You're way better at getting Cartman to shut up."

"I try," I laughed. "You okay?"

"I will be," Kyle said, setting his hands down in my lap. "How about you?"

"What's up?"

"Your… nightmares," he clarified. "Anything really pressing, lately?"

"Same as they have been, really," I reported. I leaned against the table, and absentmindedly played with a few of Kyle's curls, twirling the untended corkscrews around my index finger, setting them back in place. "They're more feeling than image, you know?"

"Hmm." Kyle rubbed the side of my thigh. "I'm worried about you," he said. "I don't want you to get sucked in if they get more vivid. You know? Like if that's what happened to Red."

"They're still really distant," I offered.

"Tell me everything about whatever you might see tonight," Kyle asked sternly. "I don't want you disappearing on me or anything. We're gonna find out who or what this Dagon thing is pretty soon, I bet. Whatever it is, it's not going to get you."

"It won't."

"Mmhmm."

Kyle kissed my neck, and half-voiced my name, his tone one of worry.

"What's up?" I wondered.

Kyle let out a hum. "I can't believe we can't go into the Carnival together," he said. "I fucking hate this. They're splitting the whole team up on purpose. And am I the only one who feels like we're already on some weird verge of falling apart?"

"What do you mean?" I wondered.

"I mean, we've all got our separate things keeping us in right now," Kyle elaborated, "but… I mean, you said you wanted to stop someday. Clyde looks tired. Token—I don't fucking know, like, once the surgery happens, I don't know how he'll still be involved. I just… I don't know, I've felt that things are kind of out of synch. And once we're all off on our own, I don't know."

Desperate to say something in response, but at a loss for words, I took up both of Kyle's hands and kissed the backs of his fingers—first his left hand, then his right, then left again, twice.

He sighed, and leaned forward against me, his head pressed into my shoulder. I pillowed my head against his, and tugged him in.

"I can't believe we can't go in together," Kyle repeated.

"I'll wait once I'm in, if I can," I declared. "You can come find me. Or I'll find you. We'll figure it out."

"We'd better."

"We will."

– – –

_Cartman_

There's, like, maybe two things in the world I really fuckin' care about. Like, the _Sophie's Choice_ kind of 'care about,' the two things I'd be hard pressed to choose between. That. Yeah. And here they are:

The League, and my family.

By family, I seriously just mean my mom and myself. Fuck Scott Tenorman, fuck Jack Tenorman, fuck my mom's weirdo extended family and my cumrag of a little cousin Elvin, and _fuck Damien Thorn_ right back to the Hell he crawled out of. Maybe my mom and I have some trust issues between us, maybe she is a whore and maybe she has really bad judgment on filtering out what she decides to tell me, but I love that woman, and as angry as I could ever get with her, I'm always willing to risk something to help her.

What defines family and friends to me doesn't really come down to the same kind of trust factor it does for people like, oh, Kenny. I actually have a lot of trust issues. But I've also got my pride. I'd quit the League over stupid shit before, and I wasn't about to risk doing that again—I mean, the League's like, one of the only things that keeps me coming back to South Park on my school vacations. Even when the other guys might not exactly trust what I'm doing or when I don't trust them (Butters…), I stick it out. I have to.

Am I in it for myself? Yes. Am I in it for everyone else? Sure. But me first.

I figured some of the guys had to be in it for themselves first, too. I mean, fuck, Wendy did her own thing under our noses for months before she joined. The fact that Butters was being a confusing asshole and switching from Harmony to Chaos again just kinda proved that he had personal motivations. Kenny… of fucking course Kenny started it up for himself. Oh, and Craig.

We'd all joined for personal reasons, and it was personal reasons that would get us to Damien, who'd been attacking us on individual levels from the start. He'd just gone one step too far when my mom got dragged into it. Whatever 'it' was. His overall plan, scheme, Carnival, whatever he was calling it.

And the other guys could do whatever the fuck they wanted, for whatever the fuck reason they were in it for, but I knew for a fact that Damien's main target wasn't Kenny. He wanted me. Tenorman wanted me. Disarray was a little shit who just wanted _everything,_ so he was the only one I was really seeing as a possible problem.

It was the fact that _he_ was the one to be handling my mother, the fact that _he_ had set us up against the Lion, the fact that he'd survived in the afterlife _at all_ that was digging under my skin. If I'd seen Tenorman at the pit that night, or Damien, you can bet that I would not for one fucking second have let Chaos take down the Lion.

Why? Because those two would not have hurt her. She was obviously valuable to them, because she's valuable to me. But _Disarray,_ now, he was, I repeat, a problem.

Talk about self-motivation. Disarray could get away with anything, because he wasn't afraid of anything. Not Hell, not death, not complete darkness and disorder.

He'd been the one terrorizing my mother. He'd taken her, he'd waved her in front of my face, just out of reach. He was the only one of that Carnival threesome that actually got me worried that she was in real danger, because he didn't care about a person's value.

I have a pretty lean outlook on value when it comes to some people, too, sure, but a lot of people do. Everyone can have their low opinions, it happens.

– – –

I left the meeting without saying much. What else was there to say? Karen got all reminiscing about Salt Lake City with Gary while she showed him around, Kenny and Clyde did that thing where they shut down into this all-business vortex no one can pull them out of till they've worked out plans on their own. Butters drove Wendy home, and I hadn't figured out till they'd left that I had about zero intention of going back to her house that night.

Instead, I walked. Kenny caught up with me once before I left, telling me to be careful and that he'd figure everything out about the Carnival. Yeah, I bet he would. He wasn't stable. Butters wasn't fucking stable.

I wasn't, either, but, hey, nobody was.

Nobody was sure of exactly what we were up against. I thought I knew. I'd figured I could easily go after Tenorman, exploit the weakness I knew he still had, and call it over. I had not been fucking expecting Disarray to show up.

So now of course, of _fucking course_ Butters would have to go and bring Chaos back, and if history had taught me anything it was that having Chaos around meant I'd have to struggle to beat him. Butters wasn't always good. Like, good at what he does. He used to be a Goddamn idiot, and I could beat him no problem. Kids playing a game, kids playing a game. Then he got fucked up, or Dougie fucked him up, however exactly that had happened, and he dealt a bunch of blows I couldn't counter.

It all started with us. Kenny could say whatever he wanted about how he started as Mysterion, but it all wound back to Chaos and the Coon. I felt a little cheated at the end, when Butters gave Chaos up. Because I didn't beat him, and now the little twat still had me pegged for a favor. Still. Four years out, I still owed him. I owed _Chaos,_ I kept repeating to him, especially when I figured he'd never be back. If he didn't come back, I'd have won.

I dunno if maybe I wanted him back or not. I sure as fuck hated the fact that he'd brought Chaos back just in time to beat me right down, even if he was 'on our side,' so to speak.

He'd beaten the Lion, but had we saved my mom? No.

That was right where Tenorman wanted me, too. Laden with the fact that my mother was stuck somewhere in that Hell on Earth, surrounded by soulless Gingers (and the devil, but whatever), and that I had ticket number ten of ten. I had to go in last. He was making me come in last. Oh, _Chaos_ got to go in, even Goddamn fucking Canadian mountie tech boy got to go in before me.

Ugh.

Tenorman was still all beat up about me having his parents killed. I got that. So why wasn't his revenge just… you know, killing other parents? He was working the parent angle, anyway, but only as an insult. Craig and Wendy had red-haired dads, but they hadn't been swept off anywhere. Nope, there was just some kind of test Tenorman was putting the offspring through instead. Huh.

I wasn't watching where I was going, really, on the way to my house from Token's. At least I'd grabbed a light jacket, it was getting windy. South Park doesn't really get warm wind, even in the summer. It's all from the upper mountains.

I wondered how they'd taken my mother. Nothing I came up with worked for me. If she'd gone willingly for whatever reason, that was pretty insulting. If she'd put up a fight, I didn't want to think about it. All I knew was she was crying when Disarray had her all dressed up and gagged at the pit.

Only a few houses down from mine did I realize I was way too hot. It wasn't the usual cooling wind blowing through, it was warm. Not summery, just kinda dry. I looked off in the direction of the volcano and hoped Stan damn well knew what he was talking about and could get us to the right place.

When I started walking again, I slowed down. The hot air scratched at my throat, but I ignored it. I was much more interested in the fact that maybe I hadn't been followed, but I definitely wasn't alone.

"Good evening."

Fuck.

Even though it was exactly what he wanted me to do, I stopped, and felt my ears twitch. I didn't choose to be the Coon out of nowhere; I've got the best sense of hearing in the League… not to mention sense of smell. Sulfur, for the record, mixes like shit with plain old nasty body odor. And it's gotta be hard to pretend to be sneaky when you've got that bad of a limp.

Tenorman.

"A little late for a pig to be out of his sty, wouldn't you say?" he wheezed into the air. He limped around to my diagonal right, two o'clock. I didn't move.

"Where's my mother?" I demanded, holding in every urge to raise my voice.

In my inner jacket pockets, I kept spare talons and a tie-back mask, just in case. Now was not the time to reach for them, not yet.

Tenorman slink-limped to my five o'clock point. He was pretty quick, for needing a cane, but he was obvious.

"Where she belongs," he said, "for now. I'm having trouble deciding whether I want her to be the main attraction at my Carnival…" Tenorman was up on my back in an instant, two shuffles and one loud clack of his cane, and then his sulfuric breath was in my ear when he leaned down and whispered, _"or just the main course."_

I reached into my pockets to slide on my spare talons and whirled on the bastard, turning to my right and swiping down with my left hand. I didn't miss.

Tenorman went down, for a second, but spun at a turn by stabilizing his shiny black walking stick. He was still on his knees, where he belonged, so I grabbed him by the hair and scratched him across the face before tossing him down. He went down laughing, which I should have expected.

Thinking fast, I grabbed his cane and planted my foot down hard on his neck, choking him into the sidewalk. I lifted the cane up over my head and demanded, "Where is she?"

Tenorman leered up at me. Adding insult to injury, he lay his arms out, spread-eagle. He wanted me to attack. "Give it your best shot, pig."

"Coon!" I whacked him in the side of the skull with his own stick.

I don't know what I was expecting. He didn't laugh, or wince, or anything. I didn't know if I wanted him to be some kind of hate-piñata that I could hit over and over again and he'd just spit out all the information I wanted, or what. I _did_ want satisfaction out of beating the shit out of him, but I didn't even get that. Because he wanted it.

_"Where is she?"_ I shouted again, holding the cane back up over my head.

"Keep going," Tenorman chortled. "Do whatever you want. I'm immune."

"…What?"

"Invincible."

"No, you're not." I tightened my grip on the cane.

"Stop."

The new voice, commanding and rough, came from a good distance behind me.

_Really?_

"Let me have this one, Mysterion," I said sharply, not taking my eyes off the grinning idiot that was rightfully mine to waste.

"You're off duty and incredibly exposed," Mysterion chastised me. He moved up behind me and grabbed my wrist. I still did not look at him. Even if he was right, I didn't want to shut down on his orders. "Trust me, I'm not one for wanting to take this fight away from you. You deserve it. Just not right here, and not right now."

"Then what do we do with him?" I scoffed.

"Why don't you ask him?" another voice prompted. Two others right behind me, Angel being one of them. I had no idea how long that chick was going to be able to keep up the 'completely righteous' angle, but she'd kept it up for a few years now. I just have a hard time believing that anyone can be one hundred per cent perfectly _good,_ you know?

I stepped back and passed the cane off to Mysterion, who kept the stick held at Tenorman's throat. I knew Mysterion wouldn't kill him, that wasn't his thing. But I did kind of hope he'd let me throttle the everloving fuck out of Tenorman once I was in the right setting to do so. Oh, I wasn't going to _kill_ him, no, I'd just get him pretty fucking close. Killing him would just get him on a level like the one Disarray had climbed to.

I pulled on my spare mask, then moved Mysterion to the side and hauled Tenorman to his weak feet. The gasp from behind me told me who the other new arrival was: Harrison. The other two must've gone on duty to walk the Mormon kid home. Guess it was only expected he'd have to see some action before helping us out.

I didn't care either way if he helped. We didn't need someone to _pray_ for us, we just had to get the fuck in there and stop the enemy. I mean, right? What could he do for us that we couldn't do on our own?

"Tell me why you're out here," I demanded of Tenorman, going for a question other than something directly related to my mother. Maybe I could talk him around into admitting something.

"Just to see the look on your face," he answered, looking me right in the eyes. I wanted to punch him, but I didn't. I just dug the talons in closer to his neck, where I held him up. "Charon's apprentice was pretty impressed."

"Charon's a… Disarray?" I guessed.

"Couldn't even beat the Lion," Tenorman mocked.

"I could damn well have beaten that stupid fucking Lion!" I shouted in his face. "Chaos just—interfered!"

An unsettling grin spread across Tenorman's face. "So we _can_ be expecting him?"

"You better be worried about a lot more than fucking _Chaos,"_ I grumbled.

"You?" Tenorman laughed. "Oh, I've got plans for you."

Lights appeared on the road ahead. Rule one of being officially off duty but still handling a target: never compromise your identity. I shoved Tenorman at Mysterion and fell back next to Angel and Gary, having just enough time to tuck away my talons and mask before the lights approached, and stopped right in front of us.

The passenger door to the car, a nondescript black sedan with no identifiable plates, opened to the sidewalk. The car's brights were on, and washed out the silhouette of whoever was driving.

"Your ride, I'm guessing?" Mysterion said, shoving the cane into Tenorman's hands.

"Just like that, Mysterion?" he returned. "You're letting me go?"

"I'm just giving you a running start," Mysterion snapped. "You've invited us to this Carnival of yours, remember?"

Tenorman just smiled. "That reminds me," he said, staring past Mysterion, right at me. "There is something I wanted to offer my charming little brother over there." Gary took a step away from me, offering me up. Thanks, dude who's supposed to be praying for us. Thanks.

"What?" I asked.

"Early admittance."

Oh. Oh, perfect. Perfect. Even if it was a trap, I had to take it. I wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything else otherwise. Finally, fucking finally, a mission just _offered_ to me. Not Mysterion, not the whole League, _me._ I'd get the first crack at whatever this Carnival thing was, I'd be the one reporting back, and I'd get my mother the fuck out of there (I'd ask her questions later) before the fight.

"We are extending one early entrance to—"

"I'll take it," Mysterion said.

"Hey!" I tried to stop him, storming up to where he and Tenorman stood.

"No. Cartman, it's too risky, I'll take it."

"Bull_shit_ it's too risky! You just want to go in for your girlfriend, you selfish—"

"Look who's talking."

"Calm down, boys," Tenorman said, too evenly. "There's a way you both can win."

He reached into the car, and took from the passenger seat a camcorder-sized black leather bag, which smelled of sulfur, coal, and something I couldn't really detect. Some kind of incense. Wasn't perfume, wasn't a spice. It was foreign, and after only a second of being exposed it started to overpower the other scents of the mines that clung to it.

It was weird—for being made of the stuff, the Golems didn't carry the same smell that Tenorman or the bag did. Damien probably had some way of masking that, but it was only the dust that gave off what the material was. The bag was dusted with it.

"You let little Eric into the Carnival first," Tenorman bargained, "and I'll give you this bag. I'll give you this on the condition that nobody follows him in. He comes alone."

"It's a trick," Gary said quietly, like the asshole behind you in a movie theatre who yells at the girl not to open the closet because the killer's in there.

"I'm giving you an option that you can work to your advantage, if you know the right way about it," said Tenorman, offering up the bag. "We can let one in early. So long as it's within the next… let's say, twelve hours. All Eric needs to do is show up." He sneered at me, then pushed the bag closer to Mysterion, who remained upright and on guard as Tenorman continued speaking. "Alone. And you get the bag."

"What's in there?" Mysterion wondered. "Why should I want it?"

"You've been looking for it, haven't you? It's been one of the greatest treasures found in the mines."

Mysterion's gloved hands hovered over the bag. "The lamp," he whispered.

"It's yours, if you take my deal."

Mysterion glanced at me, then back toward his sister. I kept my focus on Tenorman. What I wouldn't give to be a human lie detector.

Whoever it was, in that Carnival group, that was calling the shots, he didn't think much of us, that much was pretty obvious. They were shoving all these rules at us, but giving us hints and pointers along the way, calling it all one big game. It was hard to tell if they were trying to get us to cheat, or if we had to take the hints and work our way around them.

"Don't do it, Mysterion," said annoying moviegoer Gary Perfect Conscience Harrison. "It's just like making a deal with the Devil. You can't."

Tenorman pretended not to react.

We had a choice, sure. The thing about deals, though, with devils or anyone else, is to know how to manipulate them right from the start. How to make them beneficial to your own party. Find the loopholes before making the trade. Write your own fucking fine print.

"He'll take it," I said, grabbing the bag from Tenorman. I made a note to not wash that hand, I even subtley rubbed my fingers on the strap so I could keep some of that incense on me.

"Cartman," Mysterion started.

I cut him off with, "He'll take the lamp, I go in first. If—"

Oh, you liked that, huh, Tenorman? Liked hearing me make some terms?

"If I get passage straight to my mother, you understand? And if," I added, prodding Tenorman back toward his car, "you and me get a real fucking fight. Disarray or whatever the hell you're callin' him stays out of it. You and me."

It sounded like something he'd want to hear. I figured he'd still have the other two on guard, and they had their little army, but eventually I'd have my backup, too. I just needed a chance to get what I needed, to go after my own problem and handle it my way without anyone interfering for a little while. I could turn Tenorman's offer around. I had the night to prepare for it, too.

"Do we have a deal?" Tenorman asked Mysterion.

He didn't confer with his sister. He didn't argue. Mysterion just looked at me and asked, "You sure you know what you're doing?"

"Positive. You guys do what you've gotta. I'll be fine alone."

Mysterion secured his grip around the bag, and lifted back the flap to be sure the lamp really was inside. From the look on his face, I'd say it was. I didn't get a look at it personally, but I wasn't looking for the object again. I was just gonna follow its trail.

Missionary Gary didn't protest or anything, either, so we were able to make the deal pretty much in silence.

I even got the pleasure of being the one to say, "Deal."

"Twelve hours, brother," Tenorman reminded me. "See you at the show."

He bowed his head to us, gave an awful lecherous wink over at Angel, then slid into the car and was driven away. In the clouds of exhaust, Mysterion was still hugging that bag like a kid with a teddy bear.

"You swear to me," he said, and I watched him grip the bag even tighter, "that you wear your wire, and you report back to us every step of the way."

"Of course I'm wearin' my wire," I said.

"Aren't you exhausted, though?" the Guardian Angel asked, walking up to us with Gary following behind. "You should rest before—"

"I'm fine," I insisted. "I'm going. Now."

And nothing could change my mind.

I was glad Mysterion wasn't making the effort to. I'd been trying to focus all night. Sometimes in, sometimes out. This was something I'd been waiting for, for a long, long time. My chance. My fight. My half-brother.

I was getting early entrance. I'd show those Carnival bastards what they were fucking with. I'd be the hero this time.

– – –

I hadn't even made it to my own house before turning to go back to Wendy's. As soon as I arrived, mostly just there to report (and brag about) what had happened and that I'd be kinda taking a trip for a while. Wendy was sitting slumped over her kitchen table, staring at her phone, a mug of something next to her. Butters was nowhere at first, but he came down the stairs once I'd made it into the kitchen.

Wendy looked up, and sort of smiled. "Hi," she said. "I thought you weren't even coming back tonight."

"I'm on my way out," I said. I walked up to the table, and stiffly, Wendy stood. Like it was a chore. She looked tired as fuck. So did Butters, who also had guilty black circles under his eyes, and he swerved away from me to stand next to Wendy once he'd made the choice to join us. Swerved like I'd hit him or something. (I probably would've. I wanted to.)

"Out where?" Wendy asked.

"I just had a fight."

"What? Where?!"

"With Tenorman, out on the street."

"Oh, my God," Butters said. He looked worried.

"I handled it," I snapped. On my own. Mysterion had just kinda been there, right? Close enough. "I'll spare you the details, but I got him to let me in early."

"Do you need partners?" Wendy offered. "I mean, I…" she looked at her phone, "I'm supposed to… I'm waiting for a call, but I'm sure you could ask—"

"No, I'm good."

She whirled on me.

"You're going to the Carnival?" Wendy yelped. "Alone? That's suicide!"

"No," I said, "it's an advantage. Smell my hand."

"Eew, no!"

I held out my right hand, the one with which I'd grabbed the lamp bag. "Smell my hand, Wendy, what's it smell like?"

"I totally don't want to know."

"For fuck's sake. Tenorman handed off Kenny's lamp to him," I grunted. "I don't know shit about incense, I was wondering if you did, or Butters."

"I'm not smellin' your hand, either, Eric," Butters mumbled.

So I waved it in his face. "It's fucking incense, idiot."

Butters coughed a couple of times, and took a wary step back. "Okay, okay," he gave in, "yeah, that's incense."

"Is it cloves, or what?" I wondered.

Wendy wafted the air. "It's frankincense."

Ah. "So remember what it smells like, and if it's anywhere in the Carnival, I bet that's close to wherever, like, Red and them are," I said. "Space Between and all that stuff."

"Huh. That's real smart, Eric," Butters complimented me. Like I needed that right now.

"Uh-huh. So, anyway, I'm not going unprepared, Wendy, is all I'm saying," I said. "I'm going in, I'm saving my mom and then I'm gonna have a word with her and figure out this whole fucked up Damien thing, and then I'll report back to all you guys and we can get going on crashing this Carnival. Kay?"

Wendy nodded. "I guess it makes sense," she agreed. "You going back to the base?"

"To change, yeah. I'm going now."

"I'd offer to drive you, but…" Wendy looked over at her phone. "Sorry, I'm just… I'm so worried about him."

Uh-huh. Yep. Got it. Damn.

"I'll drive you back," Butters offered. "I was gonna head back anyway. To, uh, work on something."

I glanced at Wendy. "You gonna be okay for now?" I wondered.

Wendy nodded. "I'm fine, guys, honestly. I want to be on call for Token. Just in case. You can use my car, Butters, here," she said, taking a key ring out from a pocket in her bag she had set on one of the kitchen chairs. "The little silver one that looks like a peg gets you into the workshop. You know how to boot everything up, right?"

"Yeah," said Butters. "I'll be real careful with the stuff, Wendy, I promise."

As aggravating as it was to have Butters helping me out _again_ right before I went off to the Carnival, I stuck it out for the ride. One thing I hate about Wendy's car, though, is how fucking tiny it is. I felt cramped, like I was obligated to have a conversation with the driver on the way back to the base.

I managed to get out of it until about halfway there, when he broke.

"Look, Eric," he said, even beating me to the start of the conversation, "I'm sorry about tonight, okay? I really am."

"Uh-huh," I offered, looking out the window.

"You don't have to be sore about it."

"I don't have to be sore about it. I don't have to be sore about seeing my mother gagged up and dressed like a cheap prostitute—"

"Well, Eric, your mom is—"

"Like a _cheap prostitute,"_ I repeated through my teeth, "and held over a pit with a huge ancient Lion in it by a dick who wouldn't stay dead and then have her watch me get the shit beaten out of me and then have to have you come to my rescue, like she can't even rely on me to help her out on my own. I don't have to be sore about that. Thanks, Butters, that's super comforting."

I heard him sniff. "I'm sorry," he said in a harsh whisper. His hands tightened around the steering wheel. "Eric, I'm sorry. You were going to get really hurt. You're my teammate. You're my friend. I couldn't… I'm sorry."

"If you're sorry, shut up."

"Okay."

For the rest of the ride, he said nothing. When we parked, he said nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing, all the way on the walk to the base.

I was making the turn to head to my room to change when Butters fidgeted with Wendy's keys. I glanced at him briefly, and saw a weird kind of focus on his face as he rubbed his thumbs against the little peg key that Wendy had pointed out. "What are you doing with that?" I had to ask.

"Can I not shut up now?" he challenged me.

"Fine."

"I'm making armor," Butters answered quickly.

Figured. "Chaos armor," I guessed.

"New armor," he corrected. "I don't have time to make much more than a helmet."

"Why are you doing this?" I had to ask.

"Huh?"

I sighed, and folded my arms across my chest, challenging him from across the room. We had the entire front living room area between us, and neither of us moved. He couldn't just change like that. Go from one idea to the next. "Why," I asked, more slowly, "are you going back to Chaos? You said you quit."

"I quit bein' weak, Eric," he said calmly. "That Chaos, Disarray's Chaos, that was weak. I needed Harmony to heal. Now I need this, okay? Please just try to understand that."

"I don't."

"I know you don't," he said sharply, stepping over my own words. Neither of us had turned on a light yet. There was just a little light in the hallways behind both of us, from utility lamps in the kitchen and bathroom. He stared through the near-dark at me. He did kind of look sorry. "I tried not to need it, but there's a lot I gotta do, Eric, if I wanna keep helping in the League. And I do, I do want to help, I just have to not ignore my real talents, okay? I like helping people, but I need a kind of… I dunno, jeez, disorderly way of doing it. I've gotta let loose a little or I won't do any good at all. I'm stronger. Chaos is gonna be different, I promise. Please tell me you understand. Kenny and them seem to get it." He paused, and tightened his fists around the keys. "I need this, Eric. I need Chaos in order to do good."

I was still in the dark about that. But if he wanted to change, fine. I just didn't get why he'd had to switch it up at all in the first place. I didn't get a lot of what Butters did. Butters just kind of… was. Sometimes I was cool with that, sometimes I fucking hated it. Right now, though, I wasn't worried about him or anyone else.

Just me. Just getting my mom back. He'd stood in the way earlier and he wasn't going to do it again, that's all.

"Whatever," I offered.

From then on out, the night belonged to me.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Note:**

Sorry for the crazy delay on this chapter, we totally needed a bit of a break over the holidays. I realized it had been 2 months... thanks for being patient, I'm glad to be posting again! ^^ I'll try to update on a fairly regular (bi-weeklyish?) basis. Also working on some other projects at the moment, too, so I'll try to keep this going as frequently as I can. Thank you so much for reading! I'm glad to be posting this story again. :3

(Also, this is where the narration starts getting funky. XD Been planning to let Eric speak a little, and there will be other changes in the narration coming up, too...!)

~Jizena, & Rosie Denn

– – –


	16. Ep 16: The White Room

_**ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. **_**_|_|_|**

_Kenny_

I had it.

Everything else in my brain was this clouded mass of mangled thoughts, duties and hopes and responsibilities all flickering in and out like sparks from a dying fuse, and the only thing that showed up clearly was that simple fact:

_I had the lamp._

I was almost afraid to touch it with my bare hands.

Yes, I knew the risks of what had just happened. But Cartman had been wanting his chance to get his own mission anyway, and I could think of no better time than now to give him just that. We had someone going into the Carnival early; he'd absolutely be fitted with his wire, and keep us posted on whatever happened, I had to be sure of that. Plus, Craig and Stan were going to be the first two in once the gates began opening for the rest of us, and they were a couple of the best I could think of to have the first chance to attack if the need arose.

The thing that bothered me most was that I was last on the list. There was little doubt in my mind that Damien had arranged that exactly the way he wanted. But I had the lamp. I had the lamp. Even outside the Carnival, I was several steps closer to Red than I had been since the night of her disappearance.

When Karen and I returned home, after seeing Gary into his own house, armed now with a spare wire as a direct link back to any of us, I took the lamp immediately to the meeting room and set it at the end of the table, where I sat, removed my hood and mask, and simply stared at the thing.

It fit in both of my hands, and weighed much less than I'd expect it to, if I were looking at it on its own. There were no signs of tarnish, though it had to have been hundreds of years old, and undoubtedly made of pure gold. Carrying a faint scent of some kind of incense, it looked like a model of something out of the _Arabian Nights,_ its design much like a long, short teapot, as I'd anticipated it would when Henrietta first told me about its existence.

I narrowed my focus on the object, and touched my right hand, still covered in its thick green glove, to the thin handle at the back. This thing, I reminded myself, had belonged to Alhazred, the madman who had written the _Necronomicon,_ the first to record his madness from the likes of Cthulhu. In a way, a spiritual predecessor of mine. I had not gone crazy, I was not on the verge of madness nor did I ever intend to be, but I had seen the same things that man had. I had known R'lyeh firsthand.

This little tool was going to help me see the rest. This thing, according to Henrietta, could show me the Dreamlands. Where Red was. The Spaces Between, which Damien had been using to travel unnoticed between Hell and Earth.

"I'm coming," I whispered to it,_ through it,_ leaning in so closely to the lamp that I could almost see my own reflection in the polished golden side. "I'm going to find you, Red, no matter what barriers I have to break down."

"There aren't any barriers."

I sat back and held my breath.

"Don't turn around."

Red's voice was coming from behind me. And to my side, and from everywhere in the room. "Where are you?" I asked, cautiously.

"Somewhere I can see you."

I grabbed at the tabletop. My heart was pounding, and I bent over the lamp. The incense began to smell like my girlfriend's preferred perfume, simple but sultry and very, very real.

It's so much more dangerous to dream when you're awake. Sleep only gives you glimpses of whatever these Dreamlands are, manifested into images your brain can comprehend. Waking, the line between our world and whatever else there is becomes so blurred, it's hard to know what's 'real' anymore.

"You can see me?" I echoed, still staring at the lamp. My eyes were getting dry but I did not even dare to blink. If I closed my eyes or my ears for one second, the dream could be over.

"Yes," said Red. "Kenny?"

I took a deep breath, half afraid that this was it, that I was already failing at my aim to not join the insane. "Yeah?"

"Is this what it felt like for you, when you were the Shadow?"

I bit my lip.

When I was the Shadow, before we had defeated Cthulhu, when I could move through Spaces with the aid of the shadows around me, I had been aware of everything around me. At the same time, though, that kind of omnipresence was kind of lonely, because life in the shadows is like looking at life through a one-way mirror. No true windows, just spaces that allowed me to see everything around me, though nobody had a clear view of me.

"Do you feel safe?" I asked. She would know that my not answering her question was enough of an answer on its own. We would talk about that later. Later, when she was physically here.

"I'm not being threatened or anything, and I can see everything you're doing," Red told me. "So I feel protected, I guess."

"Red, can I get to where you are once I'm inside the Carnival?"

"Yes." She was beginning to sound hurried and desperate. I grabbed at the lamp, as if I could reach right through it and hold onto her. "But tell this to everyone, okay? Can you still reach everyone?"

"I… yeah, I can," I said. "Except, shit… Token's hurt, like, really hurt, and Cartman's on his way to the Carnival right now."

"He took the early entrance?"

"You knew about it?" Not out of the realm of possibility, no… "I mean, yeah, he did. I can still get a message to him. He should be on his way there soon."

The scent of incense was starting to die down.

"Tell everyone not to aim for anything on the periphery," said Red. "Just go for the bullseyes. It'll make sense once you're here, trust me."

"Okay."

"Kenny?"

"Yeah?"

"Turn on a light."

Before I could ask why, someone did the favor for me. The room flashed into light, and as soon as it glinted off of the lamp's golden surface, a tiny flame appeared in the lamp's spout and the walls of the room came to life with images of places I had never seen before. Every lighted surface reflected a new world, each a kind of gross impression of both lost civilizations on Earth, and the fallen city of R'lyeh.

As if the lamp were a projector ticking out an old film reel, those worlds were alive on every wall, everywhere without shadow. Crumbling buildings, ruined columns; the Spaces Between, the worlds that had not sunken as R'lyeh once had, but still existed in circles not touched by waking reality. I stood, and glanced around frantically, hoping to catch sight of Red, when I remembered her warning:

_Just go for the bullseyes._

I focused on the spot directly across from the lamp's unlit spout, and that was where I saw it: the one place unlike any of the others, in that it was brand new. All around me were walls, towers, abandoned streets; I even saw the blur of a cat run by in the ruins of one of the cities projected in the room. But there, right there at the bullseye—there was a ferris wheel.

Found it.

Found her.

The projection was so real, I could have sworn I could step right through what in the back of my mind I knew was still the wall, and walk up to the ferris wheel itself. In front of the enormous red wheel, with ten gondolas swaying slowly in the wind, was a run-down looking building, like a tract house from the twenties. A stanchion next to it bore the Roman numeral _IX._ Attraction Nine: my ticket in.

In a flash, the images were gone, and I heard the lamp rattle. The flame went out. When I turned, I saw my sister, out of her uniform and in loose sleepwear, tying the lamp into the bag it had been delivered in.

"Karen," I said. Just—said. I couldn't be shocked, or angry, or surprised. I just acknowledged that she was there.

And she nodded. And sighed.

"Kenny," she began, "I don't want to lose you."

"How long have you been there?" I wondered.

"I saw the stuff on the walls."

"Did you hear her?"

Karen blinked at me. No. I swallowed back a strange lump in my throat.

"I don't want to lose you," she repeated. "And I mean, you don't have to do this alone. You know that, Kenny, you've always known that. Don't feel like you have to dive into something on your own."

"I'm just—I was just…"

"Nervous." She called it. "Worried."

"Karen, I'm going to find my girlfriend. And I heard her," I insisted, "I swear, I did, she's there, she's Between, she's—fuck, Karen, they have her, and—"

"And they have Cartman's mom, and they have a bunch of other people," said my sister. "And he's going in, and we're going to learn what it is we'll be up against before we dive _literally into Hell,_ Kenny. We have to go in one at a time, yeah, but we're still doing this _together."_

I sighed. "I never said we weren't. Sorry if you felt like I was sneaking this."

Karen nodded.

"I'm going over to Ike's," she declared, "and I think you should call Stan and Kyle, or Clyde or someone and just, like… not be here tonight, too."

"What?" I said. "Why?"

Karen sighed. "I _know you,_ Kenny. If you're here, you won't sleep. Look, I love living here as much as you do, but right now I wish we didn't, because as long as we live here, we're always working. And, I mean, that's fine, that's fine… but, please, Kenny, don't wear yourself out."

She had a point, of course. It had come up before, over and over really: the fact that there was no division between private life and the League for the two of us. I'd gone without sleep on missions before, feeling like I had no excuse to not be working, tracking people down or making new _shuriken_ in Token's workshop. I 'lived' more at Red's than I did at the base, which was precisely where I would have gone that night under any other circumstance.

So I still tried to argue. "Karen, you saw those projections, too," I pointed out. "I can track Red down, I might even be able to—"

"No, Kenny," Karen insisted, grabbing my arms. She glared up at me, eyes narrowed, jaw jutting out slightly as if poised to tremble, like she wanted to cry but knew she needed to hold back. "No matter how much you look at them, you still won't be able to get into the Carnival until Friday."

"Last," I corrected her angrily. "Damien's making me go in last. I won't have any advantage in there unless I study this fucking thing."

Like a security blanket, suddenly Karen's arms enveloped me. She hugged me close, and said, "Damien may be the Devil's son, Kenny, but he's part human. Think about that. He has enough sense in him to keep Red alive and safe, and she trusts you. she loves you. So do I. So take us into account, and please, let yourself breathe. We'll find her. You're going to see her soon. But just trust me when I say that for now, the best we can do is know that our time for fighting back is coming.

"Let me watch over you once in a while, Kenny," she added, more of a command than a request. "I wouldn't be much of an Angel if you didn't listen."

– – –

I was prepared for rejection from both of Karen's suggestions for places for me to stay that night, but Kyle (despite my obviously having woken him up, judging from the tone of his voice) gladly invited me to Stan's. I was a little nervous about how quickly he'd said _yes;_ I hadn't said a word about the lamp, but Kyle sounded eager for extra company. I knew that Stan had had his share of troubling dreams lately… maybe that was it. In that case, it was definitely the right choice for me to stay with them for the night.

On the drive through town, I kept the lamp tied tightly in its thick bag, and debated with my sister what our best plans for use of the object should be. One of my very first stipulations was that I inform Henrietta of the find, which Karen agreed with immediately. After all, Henrietta had been looking for funding to make a cross-country trip to track it down, and once we shut down the Carnival I could think of no other person I wanted to have the thing in safekeeping. Karen did advise me, though, to be careful with how many times I let the lamp be exposed to a lighted room. She knew that I'd be showing it just once to Stan and Kyle, but made her case for not wanting it out any more than it needed to be.

Just before Karen pulled into Stan's driveway, I texted Cartman the information Red had passed along to me: _aim for the bullseye._

A few seconds later, his response came back: _The fuck?_

At least he had his phone on him. Rolling my eyes, I just dialed his number, not wanting to code my entire—already pretty heavily coded—message. He picked up with the same words: "Kenny, the fuck?"

"Look," I said, "you're going in tonight, aren't you?"

"Gotta, dude."

I held my breath. "I understand," I said, evenly. "D'you know where you're going?"

"Up the mountain, I figured."

Seriously? I groaned, and leaned forward on the dashboard. "Dude, don't tell me you're going somewhere without a fucking map or something. Jesus."

"I've got it covered."

"How?"

Cartman let out a scoff as if I'd just asked him the simplest question in the world. "I've got Ike on it, kay? He's got Stan's maps and that computer thing…"

"Computer thing?"

"The thing that came with the tickets." He paused, then said firmly, "I can do this on my own, Kenny. I can track 'em, a'ight?"

Nobody said fucking _a'ight_ anymore, ugh. "I'm not doubting you, Cartman, I just don't want you getting lost," I stressed. "Look, keep us posted on whatever you find, and listen, I—with that lamp, I got through to Red."

"…Seriously?"

"Yes, and she said _aim for the bullseyes,_ and that we'd get what that meant once we were in."

"How come every single chick you hang out with is cryptic as fuck?"

"Good luck to you, too."

He'd take the information in his own way, but at least he listened. When our conversation ended, I thanked my sister for the ride and said, "By the way, Cartman said something about Ike giving him that USB drive. I guess he cracked it."

Karen hummed dejectedly. "Ike can't leave his work alone for a second, either," she mumbled. "I'm not surprised."

Before I could leave, I asked, "You guys okay?"

Staring at the wheel, Karen admitted, "I have no idea. I want us to be. I think. I don't know, it's hard to tell with him sometimes. He has such a hard time unplugging, but when he does, I love being with him. It's just another case of, like… where can we divide life and work, you know?"

"Mmhmm." I rubbed my sister's shoulder, then hugged her toward me. "You'll figure it out, Karen," I told her. "I know you will. Hope you guys have a good night."

"Thanks," Karen smiled. "You too." Karen put the car into reverse, then, foot on the brakes, added, "I'll be able to tell if you don't sleep, though, Kenny. Make sure you do. Make… I don't know, make Kyle lock the lamp up or something. I know you guys're gonna talk about it, but just, like, don't use it too much."

"I won't," I promised.

My sister drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Hey," she said, "I need to tell you something Gary said to me earlier."

"What, about his brother?" I assumed, knowing Karen was still apt to ask after David now and then.

"No, Kenny, about this. He said 'belief wins battles.' I think that's something they're aware of, even in Hell. What's going to help us win this is faith. Not in God or anything like that necessarily, not in what you see in that lamp, but in what we can do."

You know, I really do have an angel for a sister.

I'd be thinking about those words for the rest of the night, and on into the countdown until we were finally granted access to the Carnival. Ever since learning, during our final conversation with our parents, that one of my Immortal rebirths had been on the same day Karen took her first breath, I'd understood that she and I had a connection I could not ignore. It was thanks to Karen that I was still alive now, and every once in a while she would say things like this that kept me going. I was faster to doubt than she was; I like having solid answers, instant proof and gratification, while Karen runs on the faith that not everything that looks unfortunate has to continue to be that way.

I thanked her before she could go, and again wished her a good night. I meant it, too. I wasn't the kind of brother to ever threaten or intimidate Karen's boyfriends, knowing that she could pretty much take care of herself and that she'd never fall into a really nasty situation, but I did have a feeling that I'd eventually be needing to have a talk with Ike. He was one of the smartest, most tactical guys I knew, but going on what Karen reported, he didn't exactly 'get' relationships in the best sense. Karen must have been sticking with him out of belief that he could make a turnaround, though, so I had to trust her.

Once I'd watched Karen drive away, I slid into the Marsh household without knocking. None of us ever really did knock anywhere but headquarters. Homes were, for the most part, pretty open.

When I walked inside, the light in the kitchen was on, and I paused for a second at the door, afraid it could have been one of Stan's parents. Kyle must have heard me come in, though, despite my shutting the door as softly as I possibly could, and appeared in the living room to flag me into the kitchen.

"What's in the bag?" he wondered, going back to the important task of rummaging the fridge that he'd been immersed in before I walked in.

"The lamp me and Henrietta have been looking for." I slid into a chair at the kitchen table, and waited for Kyle's inevitable double-take.

"Lamp," he repeated, grabbing something from the back of the fridge. Then, his shoulders tensed, he nearly whacked his head on the top of the fridge when he leaned back, then turned to stare at me. "Wait."

I held up the bag. "It's more like a slide projector than a lamp," I said. "Karen saw it, too. This thing sees the Dreamlands, and kinda illuminates them onto the wall like a movie reel."

"Dude." Kyle pulled out the chair next to me at the table, set down the bottle of water he'd pulled from the fridge, and stared at the bag. "It's in there?"

"Yeah." I moved the bag onto the table, explaining, "I lit it a little while ago. Or it kinda lit itself."

"Lit itself? What'd you see?" Kyle asked.

"All sorts of shit. Places kinda like R'lyeh—" Kyle shuddered— "and the Carnival. I could even hear and speak through it."

"Holy shit. To whom?"

"Red." I nearly choked.

Kyle's response was another astute, "Holy shit."

"I know. Where's Stan?" I wondered. "If we can all kinda talk about this…"

"Basement," Kyle said. "When I said you were coming he went down to set up the couch down there for you. Better'n possibly freaking out Sharon if you were in the living room tomorrow morning."

I managed to laugh. "I guess."

"Plus, it's the best place to talk."

Most of my friends' parents had re-finished their basements once their kids were off at college, with the exception of maybe Clyde's dad and Token's parents, who didn't exactly get into the spring cleaning thing as much as, oh, Stan and Kyle's respective mothers did. Stan's basement was one of the more comfortable ones, and definitely the most soundproof, which proved useful for us at times like this.

There was a small square coffee table down there, between the old living room sofa and the enormous TV that Randy Marsh had reportedly insisted upon owning, and a cedar chest full of blankets that Stan was currently hauling a quilt out of, to add to the pile of blankets and pillows already on the sofa. "Hey," he said when he saw us, looking so much more tired than Kyle did. "What's up?"

I held up the bag containing the lamp. "New find," I answered. "Thanks for letting me crash here. Sorry I woke you up."

"Nah, it's fine," said Stan. He chewed the corner of his bottom lip for a second before adding, "I needed to wake up anyway."

Kyle breezed past me and grabbed three large pillows from the sofa, tossed them onto the floor around the coffee table, then gave Stan's arm a light pull so that the two sat at the same time, both of them with their backs to the sofa, while the third pillow had been tossed across from them. I slowly made my way around, and set the bag on the coffee table, taking a moment to study the two across from me.

It had been a night of spiking emotion all around, from trying to work out Gary's involvement to Butters' latest League decision to the way Cartman chose to deal with his own issues. During the meeting, he'd lashed out at Kyle (nothing new, really) on the subject of his psychic ability, and as far as I could see, Kyle still looked a little put off about it.

He looked more concerned, though, than furious, and from the looks of Stan's current state, I could understand why. He looked exhausted but wasn't even yawning, wasn't forcing himself to be alert. Stan just seemed sort of half-there.

"Why?" I asked.

"Huh?"

"Why'd you 'need to wake up?'" I wondered, stressing the point that he'd brought up himself.

Stan leaned over the table a little, as if we were in grave danger of being heard, and said, "I don't know if I'm paranoid of this whole weird 'Dagon' realization or whatever, but—"

"Dude, rule out paranoia right now," I suggested.

"Ugh, I figured." He looked over the lamp bag, then leaned back again and said, "You know I have, uh… unsettling dreams."

"Right," I nodded.

"They don't really have places or shapes or whatever," Stan explained. "It's like I just know they're happening. Or, like, until tonight."

I felt my heart skip. "Why?" I had to know. "What happened tonight?"

I saw Stan mull the thought over in his head for a moment before he answered, "Tonight I knew where I was. Even though after I woke up it made absolutely zero sense. Like… you know those dreams where you're falling, and when you wake up you feel like you hit the mattress?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I felt like that, only going _into_ it. Like I got shocked to sleep."

"Uh, that's not good," I surmised.

"No shit," Kyle put in.

"I'm fine for now," Stan assured both of us. "Trust me, I know what this kind of insanity," he went on, jabbing one index finger toward the lamp to clarify, "feels like, and this isn't it. It's more like I'm getting a sense of what to expect from the Carnival."

"But in your dream, or nightmare I guess," I said, "you know where you are?"

Sounded familiar. I had 'known' R'lyeh long before I had any truly waking experience with the place. If one of Cthulhu's ilk was stalking around in Stan's family history, it was bound to have an effect on him in due time. He was the only League member, other than me, to have returned from death—I was starting to wonder if I'd have been able to save anyone else at the time I'd saved him. Then again, nearly everyone had something tying them to the unexplained…

"Yeah," said Stan, "and I hear water. I know it's cold, but it's like I don't know why once I'm awake."

"It's pissing me off," Kyle admitted.

"Dude," Stan interrupted, sounding shocked.

"Sorry," Kyle said, "but it's true. It doesn't make sense. We're going into a volcano, or near it. We're going away from the docks. Wherever the Carnival is, it's isolated, how can there be water?"

"Because it isn't really anywhere," I realized. "Damien's merging Circles, remember?"

Shit. He could send us anywhere. He could send us anywhere accessible from the Carnival, and he was splitting us up. Inside those gates, I had to imagine that everything the lamp shone light on was a possible destination, not just that ferris wheel.

Bullseye.

"I bet we could see whatever Stan's dreaming about through this lamp."

"Not sure if I'm ready, honestly," Stan admitted.

"But I think I'm onto something," I said. "I need to show y—"

"Wait," Kyle said, laying his free hand over the bag. He scowled down… I wasn't quite sure if it was at the bag or his bandaged arm… before adding, "You said this lit itself when you took it out."

"Right."

"And it showed you a whole bunch of places."

"Right."

Kyle took a look around the room, then stood and rushed to an area of stacked, empty cardboard boxes under the stairs. "Dude, what're you doing?" Stan called over his shoulder.

"Hopefully making this easier. Hold on."

I gave Stan a look, hoping to get him to translate, but he only shrugged, laying his palms out in front of him to show he had nothing to contribute. Kyle returned a few seconds later with a small, oblong brown postal service box, thick tape ripped out to two sides like free-flowing appendages. As he sat back down, Kyle ripped off one of the four folding flaps that had been the box's top, studied the size of it, then held it down over the bag for added measurement.

"There," he said proudly, "this'll narrow the focus."

"What?" I wondered, while Stan casually slid the ripped off piece of cardboard under the sofa for someone to clean up later.

"If the whole lamp is exposed, it'll show us all those other places again," said Kyle. "If just the lighted part is exposed, that's the bullseye, right? We'd just see the Carnival, maybe even more of it."

"You're brilliant," Stan complimented, leaning up against him.

"I'm practical," Kyle corrected. Under his breath, he added, "And concerned." Before I could ask for clarification on that, he prompted, "Open up the bag, Kenny. Let's see what this thing can do."

I obliged, undoing the tie on the thick fabric, and slid the lamp out, and under Kyle's hands. He trapped the lamp beneath his box, which proved to be a little larger than the lamp itself. Kyle nudged Stan, who scrambled to find the discarded piece of cardboard under the sofa; once he had it, he held it over the opening in the box like a visor, so that only the spout was exposed. Now exposed to the pale light of the basement, the tip of the spout flickered with a flame, and the smell of its incense filled the room, this time with an added hint of sulfur.

Just as Kyle had predicted, the projections were narrowed down, and all across the wall facing the spout there was cast an image of the Carnival grounds. All three of us held our breath. I checked on Stan, out of the hope that the shock from his dreams wasn't about to manifest again in the light of the projections, but he looked more focused now than he had all day.

The ferris wheel was dead ahead, with _Attraction Nine_ in its foreground. Now I could more clearly make out a pathway of what I thought at first was black sand, but a second thought made me realize that it was more likely coal and ash. The entire pathway was a strike away from bursting into flame. Not far off from the ferris wheel, there stood an old-fashioned carousel, fitted with saddled, sculpted horses waiting for a rider. Beyond the building in the foreground stood more tents and shacks, each connected by the curling, serpentine black walkway.

"So that's it?"

I was so transfixed, I almost didn't hear Kyle ask his question. "Yeah," I finally answered. "That's the center of the Carnival. The bullseye. That's what Red called it."

"You were right, then," Stan said. "It doesn't exactly exist anywhere real. I can pinpoint where it _should_ be on the map, but I guess it's a good thing you've got that lamp."

"Same," Kyle agreed with a shiver, "but for now, we've gotta put this thing away."

"But—" I tried. If it was up to me, we'd keep studying the damn thing, but that was precisely the reason Karen wanted me staying with someone else that night. I'd be wrapped up in work if it meant getting a step closer… but at the same time, she was right that I'd lose sleep over it.

"No," Kyle said firmly. He carefully covered the flame, watched it go out, and slid the lamp back into its bag. "Dude, Red talked to you through the lamp?" I confirmed that she had. "Then maybe it's not a one-way projector, Kenny, have you thought of that?" Kyle scrutinized me with a worried glance, and continued, "I don't want to raise anyone's risk of being exposed to Damien and them, all right? We got rid of the Lion and Leopard tonight, let's try to not fight again till we have to."

I stared at the bag, as if a minute more with that lamp lit would solve all of my current problems, but I had to relent and agree that Kyle was right. "Good point," I admitted. "As far as I know, Damien would be wanting me keeping this out all the time."

"Exactly. Probably shouldn't even have it around in the bag…"

"We can lock it up in here," Stan offered, moving to a wooden chest (which looked like a half-finished project of either his or his father's, to be honest) at the back of the room. "I'll keep the key in my room tonight, and we'll open it up tomorrow."

"Good deal," I agreed.

I followed him to the chest, which was empty until we tucked the burlap bag inside, and Stan locked it quickly, as if the lamp would jump right out at us if he didn't. "How'd you get this, anyway?" he asked.

"Damien gave it to me," I told him.

"Well, there we fucking go," Kyle groaned, rolling his eyes. "He's been setting this whole damn thing up from the start, and—"

"It was a trade."

Kyle looked ready to strangle me. He really was on edge. "What the fuck did you trade him, dude?!" he exclaimed. "You don't make deals with the _devil._ Shit, Kenny—"

Before he could go ballistic, I cut in, "He gave Cartman early entrance."

"Oh, and what'd he trade for that?" Kyle scoffed.

"That was the trade."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Yes, it does. I let Cartman go in first, out of ticket order… like, he's going tonight, and Damien gave me the lamp."

Kyle did not move. He simply continued giving me an awful _what were you thinking?_ look until Stan stood beside him and nudged his shoulder. Kyle looked down at his bandages, up at Stan, then finally over at me, blank but questioning. "And you just let him go?" he asked flatly.

"He's doing more good going in early than getting reckless in the meantime about his mom," I pointed out.

"Yeah, true," Kyle gave in. "Still, though, making a deal like that, man…"

"We'll benefit from it. Trust me," I said, even though I knew it wasn't the most reassuring thing I could have come up with.

"You think Cartman'll go for Tenorman, Damien, and Disarray all at once?" Stan wondered.

"I honestly think he'll head straight to his mother," I admitted. "I mean, I'm hoping to go right to Red before anything else."

"Understandable," Kyle sighed. "I guess we'll just have to trust him."

"Craig and I'll be in soon, anyway," Stan added. To me specifically, he asked, "You got a game plan to regroup once we're all in?"

"Honestly," I said, "I'm letting a good deal of it ride on whatever Cartman's able to report back tonight. Other'n that, I think just as long as we stay in communication and do what Red said when I spoke to her, _aim for the bullseyes, _we can regroup no matter what Damien's got lined up."

"Well, here's hoping we find out something good," said Stan, smiling somewhat. "Now, honestly, though, man, I'm feeling like I can use some sleep."

"I think we all could," Kyle agreed. Stan nodded to me, the, led the way upstairs as Kyle followed. His foot on the bottom stair, Kyle asked me, "You good?"

"Yeah, think so."

"'Kay. No going into that chest. I mean it."

"Got it."

"You better."

"Oh, hey, dude, p.s." I touched Kyle's shoulder before he could go, and when he turned, I asked, "You okay? About the Cartman thing. I mean the shit he said to you earlier. You've got every right to be pissed. That was fucking stupid of him."

"Well, he's pretty good at being stupid," Kyle said, rolling his eyes. "And, I mean, yeah, it was jarring, what he said, and I am still mad about it, but a) I get that he's not exactly stable right now because of his mom getting, y'know, dragged off by the devil, and b) I know he's wrong. It's my own damn ability, I've just gotta keep remembering that." He bit the corner of his lip, then asked, "You really think letting him go in early was a smart move?"

"He's got his wire, and when he's motivated, he's _motivated,"_ I said. "I think it's fine. We should be getting feedback soon, I bet. You sure you're good?"

Kyle shrugged. "Won't do me much good to be angry. I stress kinda easily—" understatement of the year; sorry, dude, it's true— "but I can't let that get to me right now. You know?"

"Sure." I held out a fist, and Kyle crunched his own knuckles against it. "Thanks again for letting me crash here, man. I had to get outta my own head tonight."

"Totally get it. And don't thank me, it's not my house."

I grinned and gave Kyle a shove to get him moving up the stairs. "Same thing," I had to add. Kyle simply shook his head and held his right hand up to give me a half-assed backwards wave as he left the basement.

Only when he left did I realize how tired I was, and within seconds I'd kicked off my shoes and jeans and was settled onto the basement sofa. I glanced over at the chest containing the lamp, and let it fill my thoughts until I was on the brink of sleep.

– – –

_Cartman_

I totally forgot I even fucking had Ike in my phone contacts till he called me, right before I could head out of town. Since I was on duty, I ignored the phone and called him on the comm wire instead. The kid, like, always had his wire on.

"Didn't realize you were already on your way, buddy," he Canadianed at me when he got my signal. "I've got something you might need."

"Can you make it quick?" I hoped. "Where are you?"

"My house. I'll meet you out back."

I really didn't want any more diversions, but this one paid off. Ike hooked me up with his tablet, with the little USB drive sticking out the side like a clam neck. As long as I had the drive in, he said, it'd run a program that worked like a kind of metal detector.

"It's a map, sorta," he said. "I'm about ninety-five per cent convinced that we're gonna need a little help actually perceiving the Carnival. Like, it doesn't exist unless they want it to."

"Then what the hell's the point of the tickets?" I had to know.

"Well, I'm hoping we can count on you to tell us."

Sweet. I'd make good on that.

Karen was with him, and she just had to cut in and talk to me, too, but I kinda liked what she had to say—she let me know that pretty soon she'd set up with Goth chick and the Mormon guy and Iron Maiden outside where we knew the Carnival was located, so that they could help field out the people being held hostage in there. "So you have to let us know," she said, "as soon as you find your mom."

"I'm finding her tonight," I said. It wasn't a fucking challenge, I was _going to find her._ Oh, I'd talk to her soon enough, but fucking shit, I was getting her right out of there. And _then_ I'd finally get to punch that grin off of Scott Tenorman's face.

– – –

It was a damn good thing Ike had given me that tablet, gotta admit. I followed the sulfur smell as far as I could, which kept me pretty much on the track of Stan's maps, so I didn't even need to use the thing until my nose started burning from the heavy smell of multiple fires. The volcano had erupted when we were kids, and I remembered the smell of lava well enough that I recognized it right away.

In less than an hour after I'd started out from town, I found myself in a dead part of the forest at the foot of the mountains. The ground turned from dirt into ash, but I didn't see anything that really screamed _Carnival_ at me until I pulled out the tablet.

When I turned the thing on, it glowed blue, red and green, like reading a heat signature. While it was pointing at the ground, I didn't catch anything interesting, but when I held it up in front of my face, it felt like I was looking through a window. A gravel path, lined all in red, showed up on the tablet screen, but in the real world, all I could see were trees, bushes, and more fucking trees. So I held up the tablet and walked forward. I didn't look down, I didn't look to either side. Just straight forward, following the hidden path the tablet was showing me.

I shoulda run into at least ten trees or other obstacles, but I didn't.

Yep. I'd walked right fuckin' Between everything.

The path ended at a gate between two enormous but thin beams, and when the iPad screen went black, I tucked the device away and found myself standing right outside the Carnival.

"I'm here," I said into the wire.

"Marked your location, Coon," Ike said back. "Nice going. Now we've got a lock, and I can finish charting out our plan."

Heh, you're _welcome, _guys.

"I'm heading in."

"Good luck, Eri—Coon."

Fucking ballsack, Butters was on wire?

"Not gonna need it, Chaos," I returned.

"Keep your wire on anyway," Ike advised.

Whatever. I did, but I ended the call.

The gate was fucking huge, all wrought iron and twisted, and it stretched around in a large circle like the front gates of big old mansions. I stood at a double 'door,' marked with an arch that curled skyward with prickly points like a patch of briars. Inside the huge arch, over the doors, the words _RED CARNIVAL_ were carved into the iron. They gleamed red when the faint light from behind the gates caught them. Behind me, I could see a burned, dead path snaking back through the woods through which I'd come. The entire ground was scorched, like I was standing on crumbling coals.

There was nowhere in the gate to insert a ticket or anything, but there was a chain that hung down from the archway, attached to a bell that hung in the curve of the word _RED_'s _'R.'_ I set my right hand over my .45, and pulled the chain with my left.

"You certainly did not waste any time, little brother," Tenorman's voice crackled from somewhere. He sounded like he was speaking over a radio from the 1940s, the sound was so distorted. The speaker, I noticed, was fixed above the lefthand door. There was another on the right.

From that righthand speaker, Damien spoke: "The door will be open for ten seconds. Please present your ticket at the proper counter. Oh, and enjoy your stay."

"Like fuck," I muttered, but I didn't want to argue with gaining entrance. I'd made it this far. I wasn't about to get locked out now.

I heaved my full weight against the lefthand door, and it lurched open with a groan that almost sounded human. The ground felt harder once I'd eased inside, and while I was surveying my surroundings, the gate snapped shut behind me.

Everything was quiet for a minute. I couldn't even hear wind.

Then, I heard it: clanking—hammers on anvils. Grinding—metal gears.

And sighing, and, fainter, crying. It was coming from dead ahead.

_Aim for the bullseyes._ Gotcha.

At my feet, the ground seemed like it was divided up into very precise circles, exactly like a dartboard. White chalk outlines curved around and around in a spiral, and all around me, I started to see the attractions.

There was a ferris wheel off to the left, far back on the Carnival grounds, and there were canvas tents and wooden shacks, just like the carnivals I remembered seeing when I was a kid, only much more professionally installed.

I moved straight forward. There were no signs of life, no movements; just noise.

I paid very little attention to the tents and buildings, but I did notice some numbers.

A large wooden shack, in the shadow of the ferris wheel, marked _IX._

A manmade cavern, hulking to the far right side, marked _II._

A three-story arcade with two entrances, marked _VIII._

The attractions were reachable by separate paths, clean cut by chalk lines and walkways of the charred stones underfoot.

As I was making my way toward the center, I heard a loudspeaker crackle, and looked up. At various points around me, I noticed, there were lamp posts, and speaker posts, all of the same wrought iron as the surrounding gates. The speakers fuzzed and hissed, and then faint hurdy-gurdy music began to play, and the sounds of the anvil and gears were soon drowned out.

Someone began singing over the hurdy-gurdy, and I recognized the voice almost right off: Disarray, and the song was Radiohead's "Prove Yourself."

_"I can't afford to breathe in this time…" _

I kept walking, and soon the path led me toward the center. This was suspiciously easy.

There were three black and red striped tents set up in the center circle, and the burning smell gave way to the smell of that frankincence shit the lamp had been giving off. I still heard people off somewhere, but fucked if I knew where the sound was coming from exactly. I only cared about one thing: I didn't hear the voice of Liane Cartman, and hers was the only one I wanted to find.

Disarray kept squaking over the loudspeaker like a proud vulture who got to the roadkill ahead of the rest of its flock, and while trying not to listen to him 'singing,' I looked at the three tents looming ahead of me. Something told me this was gonna be like that old cup-and-ball game (heheh cup balls). You know, the one where you have to figure out exactly where the thing you're looking for is, one choice in three?

I'm a guy who takes chances, though. And usually, _usually,_ I can make something come of whatever the hell I end up picking.

I went for the center tent. It just made the most sense. Tenorman would have picked that one, and so would Damien, probably thinking that I'd assume the center one and go for right or left instead, thinking there was no way they'd be that obvious. But they were totally that obvious, they had to be.

And, okay, so:

They weren't.

But something told me, as soon as I folded back the flappy opening to the enormous tent, that no matter which one I picked, I would've been wrong.

I didn't hear my mother's voice, I didn't even get a chance to see Damien or my asshole of a relation Scott Tenorman on some high and mighty Damned Ginger throne or whatever the fuck he'd constructed outta fool's gold to sit his haughty ass down upon. I didn't see anything.

Behind the flap was a plain old door, stuck into a plain old wall.

Carved into it was a thick red _X. _In the center, where the lines of the numeral crossed, there was a slit opening. A sign hung to the side, reading, _Insert Ticket to Enter._ I slid my ticket into the slot, heard a sickly _ka-CHUNK,_ and watched the numeral disappear from the door.

And when I opened the door, I found that there was nothing behind it.

The room I entered into was… not really there. It was blank.

I was in a room full of nothing.

I had no idea where I was.

I don't think I was anywhere.

Maybe not even Between.

I walked a few paces and shut my eyes to get away from the blinding nothing, and I heard voices.

Damien: _"Swallow your pride, Eric. It's certainly ready to swallow you."_

Scott Tenorman: _"Nice choice, kid. Enjoy the ride."_

Damien: _"You lost your game, even after we gave you the upper hand. Tsk, tsk."_

Disarray: _"Thanks for all your help."_

– – –

When I was six years old, our first grade teacher taught us about proper nouns. I only listened to one part of the lesson.

"So, teacher, I write a big _I_ for me?" I asked her. We had to write personal journals, and we got to use any color crayon we wanted. Stan had said he wanted the red one and called dibs, but I wanted the red one, so I took it. Stan called me an asshole and took the blue one instead. Coveted red crayon in my hand, I approached the teacher's desk to ask her my question. I held up my journal, a stapled-together volume of paper, half of it lined with blue ledgers and half blank so that we could draw pictures. The only words she had told us to write were the words, _My name is _. I live in _._ I had filled out _My name is Eric. I_

The teacher smiled and told me, "Yes, Eric, very good. You put a capital _I_ because it's all about _you."_

"What?"

"You use 'I' in place of your own name sometimes, so it means that you are a very important person. You use lowercase 'y-o-u' for other people, though. You have to write a capital _I_ for yourself to show how important you are."

"Sweet."

Yes. I was very important. I was the only one who got to write a capital _I,_ I thought. Teacher said so.

The moment she left the room was the moment that self-important little six-year-old turned to the rest of the class and said, "Teacher says I'm more important than you! You guys gotta use little 'i,' cuz she said."

"Nuh-uh," I can distinctly remember Kyle fighting me about that. "She didn't say that, you just don't listen."

"Nuh-_uh,"_ I yelled back. "Teacher says I'm more important! I get to use big 'I' and you don't!"

Makes sense, right?

I thought so then and I just kept on thinking so. I was more important than lowercase 'y-o-u.' I was more important. Me. Other people weren't as cool as me. They just didn't get it, so I had to call them out about what they did wrong. I mean, if I was most important, then _clearly—clearly_ I was doing all the right stuff. I ate the 'right' food, I had the 'right' religion. I was always right.

I was most important. I was never wrong. No matter what decision I made, I did it because it was what was right for me and nobody else because that was the way I'd just always processed information.

All of that time I'd spent, all that energy I'd put into being the best had resulted in this. This place where I got everything I wanted.

Me.

– – –

I suddenly realized I needed to breathe.

I suddenly realized that I had been locked in.

Somewhere.

– – –

I think time passed. I couldn't tell.

For the love of fuck, I couldn't tell.

– – –

Everything was white, that really bright white, like when you're trying to fucking drive down the main street of South Park in like the middle of January and it just snowed and even though you've got your sunglasses on the Goddamn sun is still shining off the snow into your eyes being all like oh haha asshole just kidding you can't drive without me blinding you. Fucking snow.

That kind of white. The blinding kind.

Gave me a fucking headache, that's what it did. But at least I was alone.

I couldn't tell if there were any doors or anything, so for a little while I just kinda lay down in the middle of the room I'd found myself in.

Sucked, though, cuz after a while I realized I wasn't hungry. I'm fucking _always_ hungry, this was not cool. "Kay, Scott, what the fuck?" I shouted at something that might have been the ceiling if it hadn't been fucking snow-blinding-me-like-an-asshole white. "How long you gonna keep me in here?"

No answer.

"This is _lame!"_

My voice didn't even echo. That was kinda disappointing.

"Scott!"

Nothing.

"Hey, Damien!" I shouted. "You wanna turn the lights down? You're a fucking devil, right? What the fuck's with a devil afraid of the dark? Heh."

Okay that joke was lame, but at least nobody was around to hear it.

…

Nobody was around to hear it.

I sat up.

"Scott, I'm seriously!" I called out. "Let me outta here!"

Wait a sec. I was wearing my wire. "Nice try, asshole!" was the next thing I called out to my pain in the ass of a half-brother. "Guess what I still got? Whole fuckin' League's gonna be here soon. How do you like that? They're gonna come for me. They… they'll come for me."

I switched on the wire. "Hey, Kenny," I said. "Kenny? Kenny, can you turn your wire up?" Nothing, not even a crackle of a response. Fine. "Ike? Come on, you've always got yours turned on. Kyle? Kyle, you fucking dick, you're like in charge of the computers and shit, turn on your fucking wire, Jewish piece of crap!"

Nothing.

I sighed. "Okay, okay, sorry about that," I said. I rolled my eyes. "I shouldn't make Jew jokes over the wire."

Nothing.

"Oh, come on!"

_NOTHING._

"BUTTERS!" I was shouting now. "Butters, you always listen to me! Butters, get everyone to—"

Nothing.

"BUTTERS."

Nothing.

"Butters you stupid fucking fag you turn on your fucking wire and you listen to me right now! RIGHT NOW, BUTTERS!"

Not even a whisper.

"SCOTT THIS IS NOT FUNNY!" I screamed.

In front of me, a door creaked open.

"Fucking finally."

Keeping the wire turned on, I started walking toward the door. It didn't cast a shadow, but whatever, this big old white room was weird and too bright and shit anyway. Even the door handle was white, no wonder I hadn't seen it.

I opened the door fully, expecting to see Scott or Damien or a few of those little Ginger fucks on the other side.

What I found was another blinding snow white room.

My jaw dropped open before I could stop it.

"No…" I started to say. "Scott, you answer me!"

Still, not even an echo to keep me company.

"Butters, answer me, I know this wire's on!"

He didn't.

Scott didn't.

Damien didn't.

Nobody did.

There was nobody.

No room for anybody but me.

Capital I.

The most important person.

The only one that mattered.

What—

The—

_FUCK._

– – –

– – –

**Authors' Notes:**

_South Park _is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

So sorry about the major hiatus! We reeeaally needed the time, though. Sorry for the rather short chapter, but there's a lot of stuff coming up! Thank you so much for reading! :3 My schedule is still the schedule from hell, but hopefully I'll be able to get chapter 17 up soon. Thanks so much for sticking with this story, and for the wonderful feedback~ ^^ I'm excited to finally be at the Carnival…! Chapter 17 will also feature a narrator we haven't heard from before now…

See you soon!

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

– – –


	17. Ep 17: Hellmouth

**_ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _****_|_|_|**

_Kenny_

The day after Cartman left for the Carnival, it was raining.

I woke to its heavy pattering against Stan's narrow basement windows, fully aware that rain had not been in the forecast and, therefore, that something had just gone horribly wrong.

The chest in which I'd locked the lamp was surrounded in a strange red aura, which was also very not good.

I bolted up the stairs and ran headlong into a groggy and unfortunately shirtless Randy Marsh, whose coffee narrowly missed spilling all over me by some feat of alarmingly accurate reflexes on both our parts. "Woah," I said, doubling back, "hey, ow, hi, shit. Sorry, Mr. Marsh."

He regarded me for a second, then said a flat, "Kenny, what the hell are you doing here?"

"I needed-" I started.

"Oh, Randy, don't give him a hard time," Stan's mom called out from the kitchen. "Stan left a note, and of course Kenny's always welcome to stay. Kenny, do you want breakfast?"

Not as much as I wanted answers, no. But I verbally agreed, knowing it was the right thing to do. Even so, I turned and made for the stairs, fully aware that I looked panicked, but I couldn't even set my foot on the first step before Stan started down.

I stood back to let him down to the first floor, where he noticed my nerves right away. "Dude, what?" he asked.

"It's raining."

"Yeah? Last I checked, rain didn't stop you from—"

"It wasn't supposed to rain. Also, the lamp—"

Stan lowered his tone. "What about it?"

"I don't know, but I don't think it bodes well."

All he did was nod, and suggest we relocate upstairs.

"Wait!" his mother called after us. "Boys! Breakfast! Do you want bacon or sausage or—?"

"Yeah, Mom, sounds great, thanks!" Stan called back.

We rushed into Stan's bedroom. The sound of running water down the hall told me that Kyle was in the bathroom, but he'd be quick to catch up.

Something about the way Stan looked that morning was bothering me. He was pale. Shocked pale, like he'd just walked over his own grave.

Not that that wasn't a possibility, lately.

Stan hauled me into the room, into a darker corner, away from the light of the sole window on the wall by his bed.

The dark circles under his eyes told of nightmares. His eyes themselves were bloodshot, uneasy. There was a cut on his lower lip.

"Dude," I said, pushing Stan further back against the shadow of the wall, as if that could hide my voice completely from the rest of the house, "what happened? You didn't sleep, did you?"

Stan shook his head, bit his lip, recoiled when the cut cracked as easily as lips tend to chap and bleed in the dry dead air of winter, and pulled me further into his room The sheets of his bed were a mess; a pile of blankets lay on the floor near his desk where Kyle must have set up a separate place to sleep.

"When I sleep, I'm drowning," Stan told me gravely. "I freeze, and I forget."

"Forget what?"

"That I'm supposed to be asleep? I don't know. I just get this awful sense that something's gone, and all I hear is water."

"Dude!"

"I know."

_"Dude!"_ I repeated, fully at a loss for any substantial words. I was fucking petrified. I could only imagine how he felt.

"I _know."_

Stan was shaking. His haunted eyes moved from his own bed to the pile of sheets to the door, then to me. "We've gotta get into that Carnival," he said. "I can't fucking deal with this anymore." As if reeling and dizzy, he sat down on the edge of his bed. He leaned forward onto his knees, and, pinching the bridge of his nose between his eyes, asked, "Did you start having dreams about Cthulhu? And R'lyeh? I forgot, man, sorry."

"Not so much dreams as I just kinda… felt like it was familiar. Up until Henrietta and I figured out how to get me passage in and out of R'lyeh in like… seventh grade or whatever," I recalled. "Is this about Dagon?"

"I think so," Stan shuddered, looking at me again. "Guess I can't tell till I get there." He mumbled something else, but I couldn't figure out what he said.

"Have you talked to, uh, to Kyle about this?" I wondered, trying not to look at the mess Kyle had chosen to sleep in instead of Stan's bed. That was two things off right there: Kyle and shoddy craftsmanship, and Kyle minus Stan voluntarily.

"Kyle's angry." No shit. "I think he's pissed cuz he can't help."

"What do you mean, he can't help? Can anyone?"

"I… I don't know." Stan sounded more scared than I'd heard him in years. His eyes going wide with fear, he looked haunted; possessed. By what, well, I couldn't tell. "I just… Kenny, I think Damien or whoever or whatever is doing this to me is trying to remind me that I was supposed to die. Kyle can't deal with that."

_"Kyle_ can't deal?" I sputtered. "What about you?! It's your fucking life."

Near tears, Stan stood and burst out another raw, "I _know._ It's just that, in my dreams, or whatever the fuck they are, I feel different. Like I don't care. Or something. But I don't want to accept that, Kenny, I can't, dude, I love my life. I love living, period. I'll fight to stay alive if I have to, but my own mind keeps trying to drown me."

Quieter, he added, "I have never been so afraid of death."

"Why?" I wondered, my own voice trembling as if to remind me that my teammates' fears were mine to shoulder, too.

"Because every day I live gives me one more thing I can't bear to lose."

I'd been there. God, had I ever been there. When Red became my first steady girlfriend, when I realized I loved her, when I realized that she, and my sister, and the League were the family I wanted to protect with everything I had… yeah, I had fucking been in exactly the place Stan must have been in now. As long as I'd known the guy, he was always so aware of how fucked up life can be, but how what we do as individuals can make the struggle of living worth it, but these nightmares seemed to be weighing him down.

If Stan Marsh gave up, I had no clue what that would bode for the rest of us.

And so I, too, was terrified.

"Anyway," said Stan, as if the nightmares were just a simple annoyance like a papercut or stubbed toe, "what about the lamp? What's going on?"

As much as I wanted to keep the subject on keeping us sane, I plummeted forward, knowing that we were about to get hurled headlong into the fight we thus far had been almost forced to wait around for. "It's glowing," I told him, and at that point, the door opened.

Kyle entered, toweling dry his hair but otherwise dressed and ready for the day. "What's glowing?" he wondered, his voice raw and rough. He looked more or less rested, but sounded like he wanted to fight the world.

"The box we locked the lamp in."

Kyle dropped the towel. "The actual fuck?"

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly."

"Um, so let's get down there before Stan's parents do!"

"Why would they?" I wondered.

"Actually, yeah, you never know when Dad'll wander down," said Stan. "Let's go."

We would probably get back to previous subjects (yay—nightmares) soon enough, so I relented and let Kyle push us down the stairs. We were halted on our path only by the raised volume of the television and Stan's father hollering, "Crazy-ass bastards, are they serious?"

"Randy, stop it," Sharon called in from the kitchen. I smelled bacon. Really fucking good bacon. I wished I was hungry.

"We're losing the integrity of the town!"

Like we had any to begin with.

"What's going on?" Stan asked, approaching the sofa and leaning over the back of an armchair to his father's left.

"Oh, some corporation breezing through town buying out every single Goddamn business. I'm glad you're doing your own thing at school, Stan, Goddamn capitalists."

Randy Marsh was somewhere else on the political and economic spectrum on any given day. He could wake up Republican, eat lunch as a Democrat, and fall asleep convinced of Anarchy, for all I fucking knew. He'd always been like that.

"What corporation?" Kyle wanted to know.

"A newcomer," the TV answered, or, the dude on TV or whatever, "Red Devil Red Hair, apparently co-owned by South Park's own Scott Tenorman. Tenorman's late father Jack was, of course, once on the Denver Broncos, so we are assuming at this point that the boy, despite his recent stint in the Park County Insane Asylum, knows something about big business. We are assuming that, right?"

"We certainly are," another TV voice answered.

"No," I head Kyle whisper. Stan was simply struck dumb. So was I.

"Red Devil Red Hair currently owns the downtown Harbucks, a large plot of land on the outskirts of town, the former Home Depot, and, as of this morning, the community swimming pool, and three bookstores."

Stan and Kyle paled simultaneously. Both of their places of summer employment were on the list that appeared on screen under the header, _Under New Management._ The list of businesses remained on screen just long enough for me to make out the GSM symbol in watermark behind them.

"They are apparently in talks to take over the coffee shop and gallery space currently known as the Tenth Circle. Now, the weather."

I shivered.

"Yeah, uh…" the weather guy said, "the radar is saying it's supposed to be sunny, but, ummmm… it's… raining, Tom."

"Quite right it is."

"But, uh, it's supposed to be a beautiful weekend, which will be a welcome change for us, especially with this new Carnival that a Red Devil Red Hair spokesperson called to tell me about a few minutes ago…"

"Well, that should certainly be fun," said the anchor.

As soon as the broadcast went to commercial, Kyle's phone rang. He cringed at the sound, but ticked his head toward the cellar door.

Kyle bolted down first, answering his phone while Stan and I trailed behind. The entire basement seemed illuminated by the red aura emanating from the locked chest. Stan gave me an awful, terrified, questioning look, but I could not explain to him exactly how I felt about the glowing chest, or how I had felt when I first discovered the phenomenon.

"Ike?" Kyle was saying when we caught up with him. The rain beat unforgivingly against the tiny windows. The wind sounded like a warning. Kyle paused, paused, then—"What?! Are you fucking serious? …No. No, dude, we haven't—neither has…? Shit. Fuck. Okay. …Where? …Yeah, that makes sense." Another pause. He gathered his breath. "Did they seriously send me another one?"

"Fuck," I heard Stan mutter under his breath.

"Fine," Kyle groaned. "Meet you there soon. Yeah. Bye."

He then let out a long, anguished growl and angrily turned off his phone, looking like he wanted to incinerate it in the palm of his hand. "For fuck's sake!" he complained. "Those assholes don't give up."

"What?" I asked.

Face flushed with rage, Kyle turned to look at me, now that we all stood in close enough proximity, lit solely by the awful red glow. "Damien sent me another letter. Ike didn't open it. He says we all have to meet at the Goths' place. Clyde and Craig are getting Token's van." He let out a harsh sigh. "It's starting."

"Any word from Cartman?" I wondered. Ike, the one among us who never shut off his wire, would have heard back first.

Kyle shook his head. "They've got him. And based on what we just saw on TV, they needed him in order to open. I don't get why, but so little of what these people do makes no sense."

"Guess we'll find out there," Stan remarked with a shiver.

I winced; so did Kyle. "Guess so," the two of us responded simultaneously.

The chest glowed brighter.

– – –

It was alarmingly easy, hauling the locked chest out of the basement, loading it into Stan's car without his parents noticing, and making our way to the Tenth Circle. Kyle drove. Even though none of us had gotten a good night's rest, he was the least affected by outside circumstances. For now.

When we arrived, Wendy and Bebe were standing at the coffee bar, both drinking from large black mugs that held probably more caffeine than I'd had in the past week, and they were talking about the paintings on the walls.

"I was looking at the brush strokes," Bebe was saying. "They seem totally arbitrary, _except_ the parts in red."

"Mixed media?" Wendy offered as a suggestion.

"Blood?" Bebe wondered with a shiver.

"Blood doesn't dry bright red, Bebe."

"Wendy! Gross!"

"Well, it doesn't."

They hadn't seen us come in. Bebe tapped her unpolished nails on her cup. "How… much blood do you see," she wondered, "out on the field? Enough that it doesn't faze you at all?"

"I wouldn't say at all," said Wendy, with a hint of remorse. "Just… differently…"

Nearby, Ike and Timmy were hunched over Timmy's laptop, while a perturbed Gary Harrison sat to the side, listening to the news report they were watching.

"And, uh… Tom, I'm still seeing projected sunny skies over the next few days here in Park County," the Channel 4 meteorologist was saying from the screen. "I don't know where this rain is coming fro—_hail?"_ As soon as I heard the word, a small block of ice hit the window. "Um… apparently it's, uh… hailing…? Tom, I don't know what's happening, but if I had to guess, I'd say someone up there just really doesn't like South Park."

"Or down below," Ike corrected, turning down the volume.

"Timmah," Timmy concurred with a solemn nod.

"Y-yeah," Gary added. "Heavenly Father wouldn't be doing this… u-unless it's to flush out the Carnival."

"Pretty sure that's our job, Gary," I said, as Kyle and I worked the locked, glowing chest through the door and into the room. "Not that we couldn't use the help."

Gary looked up to say hello to us, then—and even though I saw this I am not entirely sure how this was physically possible—tripped backward over the chair he was sitting in, feet flying over his head when he attempted to scramble back a few paces. Gary righted the chair and peered over the top of it, crying out, "What in Heaven's name is going on with that chest?!"

"We're not sure," I said. Kyle and I hefted the thing to the floor as Stan fought against the wind, rain and hail to yank the door closed behind us. "We were hoping the Goths could shed some light on it for us."

"Looks like it's doing plenty of its own light shedding," Bebe shivered, taking her mug with her as she stepped over toward us from the coffee bar. She looked like she'd rushed over before she'd even prepared for the day, being dressed only in a pair of plaid pink pajama pants that barely went below her knees and a loose old black t-shirt that was most likely Clyde's. Her curly hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with a large brown clip. "What's in there?"

"The lamp," I said, catching my breath. "Who else is here?"

"Just all of us plus Karen… she's in the bathroom… and Butters," said Wendy. "He's up with the Goths right now, talking about…" She paused, took a sip of her coffee, then looked into the mug, sighed, set the drink down, and wandered over to help Gary up and stand with the others in the center of the room. Her hair, I noticed, was already in its long, silver-streaked braid. Wearing a tight purple shirt and black yoga pants, the under-armor norm for her, she was ready to be on call at any moment.

"About what?" Stan wondered. He cast a dissenting look down at the chest, then, while still listening, opted to push it against the wall next to the opening that led into the next room, where we had been attacked by the She-Wolf on the night of the gallery opening.

"Chaos stuff, I can only imagine," Wendy clarified. Gary shivered.

Now that he was standing, I was able to see that Gary was dressed in full Mission attire: pressed black pants, clean white collared shirt, stiff black tie. He was even wearing his nametag—_Elder Harrison_ was printed, white upon black, on the pin affixed to the pocket of his shirt. On the table next to Timmy's laptop was a thick black book.

Way to go, Gary. He really was ready to pray for us.

"Clyde and Craig are on their way," Bebe added. "They'll have everyone's gear."

"Good plan," I nodded.

Wendy nodded as well, and offered us coffee. The three of us took her up on the offer, while Ike and Timmy asked for second cups. Gary politely declined, and got himself a glass of water. Karen joined us a moment later, while Wendy was pouring cups of the Goths' fantastic drip coffee for everyone, and we gathered around the table with the laptop (which Karen shut) to wait for the others.

"By the way," Wendy added, "I got a call from Token's dad this morning."

"Yeah?" Stan asked. "What's the, um… verdict? How is he?"

Wendy anxiously gripped the edge of the table. "Token had his surgery. They had to totally replace his knee, plus a lot of the surrounding bone. Like, most of his femur."

Karen, seated between Wendy and Ike, rubbed Wendy's shoulder in support, and gave me a slight, _What do we do?_ sort of guilty smile. I gave my own version back, and kept my attention on Wendy, who was keeping it together surprisingly well.

"He's going into physical therapy," she continued. "Today," she emphasized, her eyes going wide.

"Um," said Kyle. "Sorry, I'm no doctor, I mean, I know that's totally within Token's territory as far as, like, knowing boundaries and everything, but… I mean, isn't that a really fast turnaround time?"

"It's a computerized symbiote," Ike reminded us, as if my brain was ready for words of that calibur at this hour of the morning. "If I had to guess, this form of physical therapy will most likely take a fraction of traditional healing time."

"Well, we'll definitely all hope for the best," I said. "I don't want to force him onto the field if he isn't ready."

"He wants to be," Wendy affirmed.

Oh, I knew. Token was dedicated to the League. At this point, one of the most dedicated of all of us, not to mention one of the most sound of mind. We needed his peacekeeping qualities at least. A shittier thing couldn't have happened to a nicer person. And we all felt, in some way, personally responsible.

If he insisted that he was ready, I was glad to give TupperWear the first swing at Damien Thorn.

"So we'll leave your extra token with Timmy, Gary, and Henrietta," I concluded. "I have a feeling he'll want to be kept up to date on everything, and get back as soon as possible."

"Timmy," Timmy corrected.

"Iron Maiden," I reaffirmed.

Timmy nodded.

It was still odd that Timmy had never received an invitation to join the Carnival. I recalled my girlfriend's letter stating recruitment of _"all able-bodied Ginger brethren and sistren,"_ to which Timmy would obviously have taken offence. He'd get his chance to prove them wrong for doubting his strength, though, I was sure.

"Oh, hey, here," Ike said, sliding an envelope across the table to Kyle. "This came this morning."

I don't think I had seen Kyle smile once that morning, and the look of disdain and loathing that set into his face when he lifted the long white envelope made me wonder if he would ever smile again. Judging by Stan's expression, he was wondering the same thing.

Very carefully, Kyle tore open the envelope, and cringed. From within, he withdrew a folded sheet of black paper, that smelled, faintly, of burning coal. The script on the paper was gold. Or, quite possibly, fool's gold. It glittered against the light. Kyle had to turn the paper at various angles to read it properly when the letters reflected too much of the overhead light.

_"Mr. Broflovski,"_ he read off, adding, "oh, we're off to a stellar start. _We, the ringleaders of the Carnival—Red Devil, Red Hair—are extending one last invitation to you to join our family. We regret to have been notified of your earlier rejections of our offer. Your benefits package at the Carnival would be one to be rivaled. Consider this option your only security."_ He shivered. _"Otherwise, you will be cut by shattered nightmares. Sincerely yours—_sincerely?! Sin-fucking-cerely? Fuck them! Fuck them for _sincerely_ signing a Goddamn motherfucking death threat! FUCK THEM."

He then stood, slammed the paper down on the table, frowned down at it; he curled his hand into a fist, lifted that fist slightly off the table, then turned his palm downward and splayed his fingers.

The paper ripped into hundreds of pieces.

The room went quiet. The only sound was the angry hail and rain barreling mercilessly at the walls and windows.

Stan, saying nothing, calmly placed one hand over Kyle's still-splayed fingers. Slowly, Stan lowered both of their hands, and I thought that Kyle himself might shatter when the next thing he said was, in a whisper, "You're freezing."

"I know," said Stan. "And you're burning up."

Kyle's eyes had not shifted away from the ripped paper.

"No one is alone in this," I reminded him, and everyone. "We go in individually, but we come out a team, got it? We can't let them get to us."

The silence at the table was consensus enough.

Four sets of footsteps descended the stairs, and the heaviest continued behind the coffee bar. Butters and the Goths had ended their meeting. "You guys better get the fuck outta here and go to that stupid Carnival," the red-haired Goth mumbled toward us. I tilted my head to glare at him. "Honestly, you're even bumming _me_ out." He paused, then, "And stop drinking all my Goddamn coffee."

"We'll pay you back," Wendy tried.

"Ch'yeah, with what, fool's gold from your mission? I don't think so."

"Well, Marsh is a Dagonite," the tallest of the three said. "He could score some real—"

"I'm not anything but myself, all right?" Stan argued. He looked too tired to argue, and deviated to what he did best: playing mediator and changing the subject to something pertinent. "Where the hell are—"

Before he could finish the question, the door burst open. A howl of wind blew through as Clyde and Craig hurried in, duffel bags in tow. Wendy rushed to close the door behind them, and while Bebe, Ike and Gary helped with the bags, I rose and strode over to Henrietta and Butters.

Butters already had a bag with him, and he didn't look ready to hand it off to anyone. He gave me a nod, and I shrugged back, indicating that, hey, Chaos was his choice, but I wasn't going to stop him. He had made his points. We needed Chaos, end of discussion. I wasn't about to argue over that part of the League's past, not when there was so much more to be done.

"Can you shed some light on this?" I asked Henrietta, keeping my voice down. The _Limbo_ painting beside us seemed like it was leering. As if I could see the fog on the river shift.

"Be specific, Question Mark," the Goth snarked back, fitting a cigarette to the tip of her quellazaire.

"Stan," I clarified through clenched teeth. Making sure Henrietta was making eye contact with me, I pressed, "This Dagon thing. Why didn't this come up sooner? Is he cool to fight? Like, what should we expect?"

"Tough to tell," said Henrietta. "I looked into it. Obed Marsh, Stan's ancestor, made some kind of deal with the Deep Ones in the 1800s. He ran a gold refinery in Massachusetts, and I guess the distant family came west for the gold rush. I guess because Colorado's landlocked, the ocean was kinda bred out of the relatives out here. I mean, his father looks fine."

"What do you mean _looks fine?"_

"Yo, Kenny!" Clyde called out.

"Hold on!"

"Dude, can we just—"

"Start suiting up," I ordered the room, hardly looking around, "I'll be there in a minute."

Clyde muttered something else, but as the others dispersed, I continued with Henrietta, still speaking in subtones in case Stan was still within earshot. "Did anything in that research of yours," I demanded, "give any insight as to how he can beat whatever's going on?"

Henrietta lit up and took a drag. "Keep him away from any weird gold objects, I guess."

"The Marsh guy in Massachusetts," the shorter of Henrietta's companions rasped over at me, "mated with something that owed allegiance to Cthulhu. Since Cthulhu's dead, it's my guess your Marsh is fine. Just getting fucked with since he died that one time or whatever."

"But Dagon—"

"Is still a problem, I guess."

"Thanks for being so fucking helpful," I grumbled, and strode over to where Clyde and Craig had dropped off my stuff.

All I could wonder as I changed into uniform was: how am I going to help everyone?

There were too many tasks. Make sure Stan didn't fall off the deep end (or into it or whatever). Find Cartman. Free the Gingers and shut down whatever cloning operation those Carnival fucks had set up. Find Red… find Red… find my girlfriend and get her the fuck out of there.

And, you know, stop some eventual Hell on Earth overthrow of the balance between Circles of reality.

Mysterion had become so much a part of who I was over the course of my life that getting into uniform was second nature to me by now. But that morning, it felt like a ritual. Maybe it was the finality of it all. We were fighting on their turf after today. This was the realization of the mission. I had to know we were ready.

Plus, something told me, even if (and when, I assured myself) we succeeded, I had the feeling this would be our last mission, at least for a good long time. We'd be going our separate ways soon. There was no telling when the entire team might come back together. Honestly, without Token or Cartman there now, we seemed to be running close to empty.

So I took my time. I let myself become who I needed to be in order to keep my head and win whatever battle was waiting for me beyond the Carnival fence.

I pulled on my gloves last. I checked my utility belt. Satisfied with my arsenal, I threw the hood over my head to conceal my features in shadow.

When I re-joined the others, I noticed that most of them were not yet wearing masks. Marpesia was an exception, lacking only her helmet. Endgame as well, which was for the best. Mosquito was the primary one among us, however, who looked incomplete without his mask.

Clyde and the Goths were deep in conversation, and his mask sat, still blood stained, on a table to the side. I looked again at the oil painting of _Greed, _Wilcox's brush strokes having perfectly captured the image of the very mask that sat as if abandoned now.

Certain items could make or undo us. Hopefully Mosquito could move past whatever horrors currently clung to that mask and continue to be the asset to the team he'd always been. I relied so much on him as a secondary leader, after all. Maybe I didn't tell him that enough.

Maybe I should have, especially that day. But I couldn't find the chance.

Looking around at the others again, I saw that Stan had hardly needed to paint his eyes with charcoal as he usually did when working as Toolshed. His eyes were haunted and nearly unrecognizable enough.

I thought I saw something wildly different about his irises, too. His blue eyes looked a dusty, ancient grey. Eyes that had seen worse than Hell. Stan had not experienced a true death, I realized. I'd stopped the process before his soul could pass on. Hell wanted both of us, the closer we came.

Neither of us was willing to give up on life just yet.

Naturally, the others noticed. But as he slid on his tinted goggles and began to check his supplies, he managed to keep his focus and say to anyone who inquired after his well-being, "I'm fine. Just ready to get in there and kick some ass."

Not everyone was convinced, of course, but focus was what we all needed. Besides, if the rain and Cartman's disappearance was an invitation for us to move out, we'd take it, trap or not.

With rain and hail still beating dirges against the outer walls, I gathered my team and explained as best I could the mystery of the glowing trunk.

Fixing her helmet in place, Marpesia said, "If the lamp is our window into the Carnival, though, I'd say we take our chances."

"Shouldn't we wait?" the Guardian Angel argued. "Wait until we're within reach of the—"

"That doesn't make sense," Red Serge interrupted. "Angel, we talked about this. You need the lamp, or that program, to find the path at all."

"Right," my sister huffed.

"And since the Coon took my iPad, it's this or nothing."

"Rain being as heavy as it is, we definitely can't track him by footprints," Toolshed pointed out. "Look, Kite and I saw what this lamp can do. If we narrow the focus, it can at best show us the way in."

"Especially if it's us two up first," Endgame said, nodding to him, "according to the tickets or whatever."

"So, consensus?" I asked. The red glow underlit my team as I spoke.

The Carnival knew we were coming. We were already playing their game. The next time the lamp lit, we'd have agreed to start making our moves.

"Open it," Henrietta advised.

Toolshed broke the lock, and I pulled the lamp out in its bag. The satchel was hot to the touch, even through my gloves, as I untied the drawstring. Carefully, I reached inside, having to avert my eyes from the unrelenting red gleam coming from within. Moving slowly, as if releasing a wild animal from a trap, I placed my hands around the lamp and pulled it out of the bag.

The lamp itself was surprisingly cool to the touch, if not ice cold, and the glow seemed to be seeping from the air around it, not the object itself, which retained its glinting gold sheen. The spout of the lamp flickered.

The flame was black.

I set the lamp down and took several steps backward, and a scream echoed through the room. No—a cacophony of screams. Several voices in one.

I tried, so hard, to hear Red, not knowing whether or not I'd be all right with hearing her voice amid the others.

It was so hard to tell, and I nearly went deaf with the sound; Kite caught an invisible hold on the cardboard box he'd brought along, and without touching it he tossed it down on top of the lamp. The black flame flickered and danced and warned. And then the scream settled down to one voice, screaming out not a sound but a phrase:

_"LET—ME—OUT!"_

There was no collective gasp in the room. We were all struck dumb.

After a terrifying, wavering moment, Butters spoke.

"…Eric?"

I looked over at him. He was delicately holding his new helmet, glowing red and black against the odd lights coming from the area of the lamp. He looked guilty, but determined.

"You heard it, too?" asked Marpesia, her own silver armor reflecting the glow.

"How could anyone not?" Mosquito noted.

"I've heard Red, too," I repeated for the others. "He must be where she is. Or close."

"Between," said Butters, slowly fitting the new helmet over his head.

It retained the classically inspired Greek design of his original, his face exposed in a blocky T-shaped opening, hair visible from the open top. But along the edges he had created a border in a very intricate, if rushed, scrolling design. At the back, the scrolls merged together in what looked like a bolt of lightning, at the center of which was a recognizable symbol: the caduceus, two serpents—one an outline, one solid—curled around a winged staff, facing one another. A medical symbol. For harmony.

Chaos had found exactly where it was he needed to be.

"Marpesia," he said, roughening his tone to suit his alter ego, "do you remember the scent the Coon picked up before he left?"

Marpesia nodded, stern and focused despite the continuing screams. "Frankincense," she recalled, "and sulphur. I can't detect it right now, but it'll be strong when we get close."

"Hmm," Henrietta began, sucking on her quellazaire, "so the Devil leaves tracks." She let out a breath of grey smoke. "And he wears perfume."

"The point is, yes, we can track him," said Chaos, all business.

_"Let me out of here!"_ Cartman's voice pierced through the room again.

Which was when I realized… we could hear, but not see. Even with Kite's clever projection box, no image of the Carnival appeared on the wall. "Where is he?" I wondered.

"I don't think even he knows," my sister pointed out.

"No, no, I know, but… why can't we see it?" I clarified. "Angel, Kite, Toolshed, you all saw the lamp cast images of the Carnival when it was lit."

"Yeah," said Toolshed, "why isn't it showing anything?"

"The black flame, maybe?" Bebe guessed.

"Good point," said Mosquito.

"Maybe it needs a specific screen," the Human Kite suggested. "There's that blank canvas…"

Among the paintings that Wilcox had hung, all of them solemn and foreboding on their hooks around us, one of the canvases had been purposefully hung blank. Since we really had nothing else to lose, I turned the chest so that the lamp's spout pointed at the blank canvas on the far wall.

The canvas was labeled _Pride. _I remembered there being a _Work In Progress_ added to that, but the modification was gone, despite there being no change to the canvas, where it hung between _Treachery _and _Heresy._

As I moved the chest, the black flame flickered over _Greed, Gluttony, _and _Heresy._ At three different but close times, Mosquito, Red Serge, and the Guardian Angel covered their ears in a wince, only to be fine a second later. Before I could ask what was wrong, the black flame hit the white canvas, and a door appeared in the blank space.

An image of a door, flickering like the flame projecting it, grey as faded ink. It appeared to be far away, down a hall that I could almost see.

Like a dart, something burst straight for the door, this image in blacker ink. I could make out the image of the Coon. He pushed open the door, and let out a cry of anguish.

"Oh, my God!" Marpesia yelped, her hands flying to cover her mouth.

The black flame at the spout of the lamp burned larger, and the ink that made up the projected Coon's cape billowed and grew broader, fluttering until ink was splattered all over the canvas.

Then, the canvas shook, and everything was white again.

Except for the red outline of a door.

"What happened?" Chaos demanded. "The lamp is still burning, where's the image?"

"Beyond that, where's the Coon?" Endgame pointed out. "I can't hear him anymore. Can you guys?"

I swore I could hear the rattling of terrified bones in the slim silence that followed. There were no screams.

Silence was almost more deafening.

Slow and serene, Henrietta took an elegant drag off of her quellazaire, and purred it out. Her Egyptian-styled eyes were half open, making her almost seem to be wearing a mask, as the rest of us were.

"No wonder Wilcox hasn't been at his best," she said. "I get what's going on." She turned to my sister, who asked, "What?" for clarification.

Henrietta gave a slight nod. "The paintings," she said, "are the Carnival."

As if primed and cued, a collective scream once again rang out from the lamp, and then the vessel itself began to rattle. Knowing that it was probably one of the worst ideas ever, I leapt for the lamp, cupping my hands over the now freezing cold object, which muffled the sound somewhat. The lamp had, however, moved on its own, and now its flame glowed a deep, deep red.

The spout was facing the _Treachery_ painting.

The light fell over the nine red nooses, hanging on the barren black trees, and they appeared to swing in the light.

And then my heart clinched.

Deep, deep into the forest in the murky painting, I saw an outline of a young woman in a beautiful evening gown.

Her hair flickered like the center of the flame.

"Red," I whispered.

My fingers were freezing. "RED!" I shouted. I wanted to rush to her.

But I couldn't let go of the lamp.

She turned, only oils on canvas. I think she saw me.

She cupped her hands over her mouth, and shouted something. She was drowned out by the other faceless, bodiless screams.

And then the lamp went out.

The Human Kite threw the light switches on throughout the building with one outward shove of his hands, and the entire building shook with a clap of thunder and a terrifying musket round of hail.

"Okay!" he shouted. "My vote: put the lamp the fuck away. Now."

The shock on everyone else's faces was all the unanimity I needed before I locked the lamp back into the trunk.

"What the fuck?" Marpesia was the first one to ask. "What the _fuck? _Are they _in_ the paintings?!"

Puffing on her cigarette, Henrietta calmly answered, "No. I mean, I doubt it. From what I can gather, the paintings represent what you're all about to face."

"Do y—" Angel began.

"I'll go get the book," Henrietta said before my sister could continue.

"Wait, what book?"

"A few of 'em, actually."

As the Goth made her way to the stairs, she passed by a visibly shaking, shell-shocked Gary Harrison. "You got yours, Mormon?" she asked, punching him on the elbow with her lace-covered knuckles.

"My…?"

_Cajones, _Cartman would probably have inappropriately added at that moment.

And thinking of that made me wonder if being trapped at the Carnival might irreparably change him. It would have to take a lot, but they were using his only close family as leverage, so anything was possible.

"Book," said Henrietta forcefully. "Your Mormon Book, the thing the Devil can't stand."

Gary cleared his throat and side-stepped away from Henrietta. "Yes," he said as casually as he could. "Yes, I'm carrying a _Book_ with me."

"Good," said the Goth. "Then let's get going."

Gary was visibly confused and concerned, but said nothing. He held his holy text tightly and began taking deep breaths.

"Are we ready?" asked my sister.

"Damien's letter said they open to the _public_ on Friday," Toolshed reminded us. "I think that's invitation enough for us to infiltrate now."

"Especially since they seem to be steadily encroaching upon the public as it is," Kite added.

"They're not getting my Goddamned store!" I heard Henrietta's cohort shout from somewhere else in the building.

Ignoring him, Kite continued, "They've bought out the town. We've seen shit like this happen before… coverups, veiled hideouts, red herrings, but everything they've done has been to get closer to each of us. Even Gary."

Henrietta returned faster than I had been expecting her to move—she was someone who generally took her damn sweet time with things, but even she probably couldn't take her focus away from how swiftly we needed to get to the Carnival.

"Okay," she said, patting the top text. "Here's the basics. Hold these," she added, holding her stack out.

"Who?" Gary wondered, clearly not wanting to touch any of them.

"I don't fucking care, anybody."

"Got 'em." Endgame stepped forward and held his hands out. Henrietta looked up at him and I thought I saw him shrug. But I definitely saw her attempt to look away before she hoisted the books onto him and grabbed off only the one on top.

"So these're coming with us, because they'll help," said the Goth, gesturing with her thumb to Endgame's stack. "The _Dhol Chants,_ Wilcox's portfolio, the _Necronomicon _just in case, records and sacred texts of the Esoteric Order of Dagon and…"

_"Interview With The Vampire?"_ Endgame read off the new top book.

"In case I get fucking bored," Henrietta said smoothly.

This time, Endgame did shrug.

"And this," Henrietta finished, holding up _The Inferno._ "Plus Dante's other two in case you need them at some point."

I nodded. "How are the paintings the Carnival, exactly?" I asked her.

"They each represent a Circle of Hell, according to Dante." Henrietta flipped through her _Inferno_ book while Gary hugged his holy text close to his heart. Chaos moved to stand directly behind Henrietta, his eyes moving fast as if he were speed-reading through each page she thumbed across.

Chaos looked both perfectly out of place and perfectly at home. Exactly the way he wanted to be.

The other Goths joined us, probably just to kick us out. "The rain's a little less intense right now," the taller of the two said. "You should move if you're not gonna fuck up your capes and books or whatever."

And they said they hated being helpful.

"When you get back," added the other, "you're paying for all the shit you keep bumming off us, too."

Mosquito gave them a tick of his head as if to assure them that we'd take care of it, and then, carefully cradling his mask, made the call: "So let's get moving. Henrietta, fill us in on the way."

_"Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,"_ Chaos read over Henrietta's shoulder. The Goths lit up as if toasting to the occasion. "Hope's gonna have to be a weapon, guys. Don't let go."

– – –

_Craig_

I was always the kid who didn't give a fuck about anything. The thing was, shit happened all the time in my town. Really dumb, out of this world shit. Stan and those guys would always go right to the heart of the problem when we were kids, and it wasn't till they dragged me to Peru that I started thinking being adventurous might not be so bad.

I mean, I played the same games the other guys did, and for the most part, that was all it ever was to me: games. Kids playing and being stupid. But I kept at least pretending not to give a fuck for a damn long time.

And for the most part, I don't. Care, I mean. For shit's sake, I didn't even want an alter ego till the Damien thing. None of us had any clue how long the League was even gonna keep going. Some of us didn't know what fuck all we were gonna do after college except maybe Kenny, Wendy and Token. (Oh, goddammit, Token—I missed that guy.)

But this thing popping up… it just felt like something I needed to do. Something to convince me that the world was worth saving.

I'd liked the R'lyeh fight, too. I'd read up on a bunch of abnormal shit with Henrietta through all that and realized that the world was more fucked up than I thought.

Something I really like about Henrietta is that she's super blunt and usually doesn't talk unless she has total confidence in what she's talking about. Something I hate about myself is the fact that sometimes, no matter how important the topic, I have a tendency to stop listening.

And I mean it's not just her, I tune out a lot of things. My brain wanders. When I was a kid, my eyes would itch a lot and I hardly blinked. I couldn't. I'd sit there in class, all through elementary and middle school, trying to focus on something other than the fact that my eyes hurt. When I complained to my mother about it, she took me to an optometrist who basically told me it was psychosomatic and that I had better vision than any kid he'd ever seen. No psychiatrist in town took my dad's insurance, so I never had a therapist. I just went on tuning stuff out if it wasn't instantly relevant to me. I stuck to what I knew.

Took me a while to accept _why_ my eyes hurt all the time (though I'll let Mom keep thinking that it was too much TV and video games as a kid and not that my retinas are essentially solar-powered lasers—yes, that's how it works and no, it doesn't burn), but now I can kinda roll with it. I still can't blink too much, comfortably anyway, but it's whatever, y'know.

Because Henrietta never liked going out in the sun, I could relax around her when we dated. I mean, I guess we dated, I don't fucking know. We hung out and did a lot of shit together and fought like a couple and stuff. She thought the word 'girlfriend' was too preppy and I don't really give two shits about calling a thing _a thing_ unless it's super obvious to both involved parties. I really do not care.

I did miss her, though. We never even had sex all that much, so that wasn't what I missed. (Realized that one a little too late, though.) I liked her energy and her style and the fact that she was cool with the fact that I had something wrong with me. Like, wrong in the superhuman kind of way. We were what we were, the end. I can't remember even why it ended. Distance, or maybe I did say something about 'we should fuck more' or something, which was stupid because she's asexual and doesn't get anything out of it. I do make shit moves sometimes.

Actually, I kinda sound like a dick right now.

But if I ever do, it's more or less because I'm the human embodiment of _neither here nor there._ I feel stuck. I've felt stuck my entire fucking life. Weird shit happened around me as I was growing up, and the fact that there seemed no end to it desensitized me to every other problem on the planet. Oh, the economy's in the shitter? So the fuck what, Barbara Streisand turned into a giant monster and destroyed half of downtown. Russia went to the moon? Whatever, aliens fucked up my town all the time.

And I repeat: _no end._

Like I was in some limbo of unnatural disasters, teeming with people who all thought they were king fly on shit mountain.

None of it mattered.

I kept trying to find something that mattered, and whenever I did, inevitably some other dumb shit thing would come along, or else I'd think it was ineffable and find it hard to shake out of routine. I started thinking maybe _I_ was the one just imposing all this wrongness on everyday life. Maybe there _was_ a psychosomatic quirk that manifested in me rarely blinking and always seeing the world for the boring spiral it was.

Just a spiral. Just a circle.

Henrietta was different in all the right ways.

So's the League. And I like that. I like being a part.

Slowly, I've been feeling myself crawling out and seeing more than the mundane. Accepting that I'm part of some old Incan prophecy and that that's kind of cool. Knowing there are others outside the spiral, in orbit around all that goes consistently wrong; others who might be able to fix things.

But I still fear limbo, and have ever since Henrietta essentially stopped talking to me.

– – –

The rain was fine when we loaded up into the cars but terrible again until we got to the base of the volcano. Mosquito cursed at the elements, at the wheel of Token's van through the entire ride. I rode in the back, helping Henrietta, Red Serge, Iron Maiden, Toolshed and the Human Kite set up the equipment that the response team would be using while the rest of us made our way inside. Toolshed and I were up first, and we strategized while we could. Except for when Mosquito told us to shut up so he could watch the road.

Gary Harrison rode shotgun, his head buried in his book. Except for when Mosquito barked that he needed a second set of eyes to watch ahead.

Clyde kept shuddering under his mask. I'd said to him before we left, "Why didn't you just make a new one?"

It was all bloody, still, and I knew it bothered him. He'd just tied it on defiantly, though, and said, "They're not taking it away from me."

"It's just a mask," I'd pointed out. "You've got other ones."

"No," was his argument. Clyde could get like that. We've been tight for a long time, enough for each of us to know how the other operates; enough to be stubborn to the point of absurd around each other. I'd say _like brothers_ but that sounds too lame. "This is me right now and I'm not letting them drag it away from me."

He hadn't said another word about it, but he still looked pissed.

Bebe was the other driver, following us at a close distance with the rest of the team in the 'borrowed' delivery vehicle from Tenth Circle.

"If this fucking rain doesn't let up," Red Serge was complaining while he and Iron Maiden ran wires between the four screens we'd been setting around the back of the van, "we're gonna get some major interference back here."

"Timmah," Iron Maiden agreed.

"The screens are backup," said Henrietta. "As long as your wires work, I think the books should be help enough."

"What if the wires don't work?" I wondered.

Henrietta shot me a look that made me buckle. Nobody can fucking do that but her. "Then we use Wendy's extra ride token and send this guy in," she said in a tone that implied I should have been reading her mind, jabbing her thumb toward Iron Maiden.

"Timmy," said Iron Maiden, drawing the word out.

"With Delphi," Red Serge translated. "Unless for some reason TupperWear shows up." He went on muttering about the symbiote surgery to himself.

"W-would they let you do that?" Gary wondered, peering over his seat back toward us. He was the only one wearing a seatbelt, and it made him have to contort his shoulders in a way that made Kite and his brother roll their eyes. "Send in two people at once?"

"Are you volunteering to go alone instead?" Henrietta said.

We hit a bump in the road and Mosquito let out a huge _"Fuck!" _ that combatted Gary's emphatic, "No!"

"They cheat, we cheat," said Red Serge. "No such thing as playing fair against the devil, eh?"

Gary leaned forward in his seat, looking like he was gonna hurl. I've almost hurled when riding with Clyde in a thunderstorm, too, but I don't think that was all that was fucking with him. "Gosh, guys," said the Mormon, "this is… I dunno, a lot. Terrifying."

"Dude, do not back out now," Mosquito warned.

"I'm not backing out, no sir," Gary affirmed. "I'm just… well, in over my head. My girlfriend is never gonna believe this."

"So don't tell her?" said Kite.

Gary kinda laughed. "I mean, I won't go into detail, that's for darn sure, but I do believe in being honest and open with the person you love."

Kite and Toolshed did one of their weird eye conversations that seriously freak me out sometimes because I _get_ that Kyle's psychic and shit but when he and Stan pull that crap sometimes I worry that he can read minds and it's a little unsettling. I mean, not that Clyde and Bebe don't have their little gestures, or Kenny and Red. It's just that Kyle's psychic and I dunno what all that means.

It also makes it that much more obvious to me that I have never really had that kind of relationship. I looked over at Henrietta at that point and all she did was hand me a wire to plug in.

But you know, that was what I liked about her and 'us' if we'd ever been an 'us.' Other couples would go inventing secret languages and all Henrietta and I did was exist around each other. I really should not have fucked that up.

So I just helped out, going along with whatever anyone told me to do until Mosquito had maneuvered us through the woods and toward the volcano.

Henrietta was talking through the wire while we worked on setting shit up, flipping now and then through Wilcox's portfolio. I'm ahsamed to say I wasn't really listening. I know I should have been. I really fucking should have been. But it was a little difficult between the rain drumming against the van, Mosquito muttering under his breath, and me thinking every time I heard Henrietta speak how best to approach talking to her like a normal person again.

Probably high on the list should have been _listen to her when she's saying something super important._

I drifted back into the conversation when she got to, "Violence is the Seventh Circle. Who's got VII?"

"Chaos," Mysterion responded over the wire.

Gary started mumbling a prayer.

"I'll tread lightly," Chaos assured us.

It wasn't long until Bebe called over for us to slow down. From what I picked up on patchy over-the-wire conversations, the lamp—with Mysterion in the delivery vehicle—had begun emitting the scent of frankinscense and sulfur, just as Marpesia had noted it would. I strained to look out the window for the other car, and when I did, through the pounding rain, I saw that someone had rolled down one of the windows a crack and was holding the lamp's spout carefully out into the air.

From the spout was pouring a thin red line of smoke.

It grew thicker as we neared our destination, and then the line moved of its own accord into a trail. As the line of smoke wound its way further and further away from us, the rain grew weaker and weaker. At least I wouldn't be super wet going into the fight. Maybe muddy, but not soaked. Cool.

We loaded out, and while Red Serge and Iron Maiden worked frantically to finish hooking up all their equipment, the rest of us gathered in a group between the two parked vehicles. Henrietta stood on a rock where her glossy black boots couldn't get horrendously muddy. Mysterion looked ready to charge.

"Okay," our leader said, keeping a careful hold of the lamp, "this thing is probably a signal to them that we're coming, so call us instantly if you need backup. There's still plenty we can do from outside."

"And we'll work our way in sooner than I'm sure they want us to," Mosquito added. "We'll be right behind you."

"Call if you need any information," Henrietta said, nodding to me a little. She does this kind of chin-tilt thing where you know she _could_ have nodded at you, but chose to be too busy or uninterested to care.

"Sure," I said.

"Keep us updated, guys," said Mysterion for probably the twentieth time. "We'll try to work our way in sooner than Damien wants. If you see Red… if you see Red, or the Coon or Lianne…"

"We've got it, man," Toolshed assured him. The two shook hands. "Aim for the bullseye?"

"You got it."

"Good luck." That was the Human Kite. He held one hand out, meaning for either of us to grab it. When Toolshed didn't move, and the two of them just stared at each other with blank expressions, I shook Kite's hand first.

When I stepped back, Toolshed grabbed Kite's hand firmly, and I could tell they wanted to hug or whatever but they didn't. "See you soon?" Kite said, his voice wavering enough to make the phrase come out a question.

"I'll find you," Toolshed assured him.

Kite nodded. "Right. Good luck in there."

"Same to you."

– – –

Following the red overhead cloud made maneuvering through the underbrush fairly easy, but we could've done without the smell. It was like someone had painted the floor of a locker room with one of those awful pre-teen colognes I was guilty of buying when I was twelve.

But according to Marpesia it was _frankinscense and sulfur_ so whatever. It still smelled like shit.

Gotta say, though, I could've done way worse than Toolshed for a partner. Between my swords and his assortment of tools we cut our way through bushes and small trees pretty fast. I did remark that he could just use his chainsaw, to which he'd said, "Dude, and blow our cover more than we already have? I'll save it for what's inside, thanks."

Fair enough.

The forest was dark from both the tall trees overhead and the mercilessly cloudy sky, but the red smoke emitted a light of its own. It was coming from a lamp, after all, I guessed it had to be some kind of light. I wondered if we'd come across any Infras or other animals of Biblical proportions, but the Carnival was deciding to leave us the fuck alone until we'd actually passed onto their turf.

"Hey. Dude," said Toolshed once we'd been walking for a while and were well out of earshot from the others. "What's with the fake platonic crap between you and Henrietta?"

No lovey shit got past him, not the League's top-scoring over-romantic. Sorry, Stan, but you are. "It's whatever," I said dully, whacking a branch out of the way with the sword in my right hand.

"You're not over her," he surmised.

"I guess I'm not," I agreed with a shrug.

"So, like, talk to her."

"Yeah, dude, because it's that easy."

"Sorry," he mumbled, giving in.

"It's fine."

It wasn't fine, I just didn't want to talk about it.

"Why'd you break up, anyway?" he asked after another moment.

"Dude," I said firmly. "Why are you so interested?"

He opened his mouth to answer, then glared forward and said, "Honestly, I have no idea."

The fact that he didn't know, or the fact that he was persisting, bothered him, I could tell. For someone who hates social media as much as Stan Marsh does, he was sure still pretty good at knowing what was going on. But did he not like that he knew? Oh, well. Not my problem.

All I could do was turn the conversation.

"How about you?"

"What?"

"Fake platonic crap between you and Kite," I clarified.

Toolshed shook his head and ducked under a branch too thick to cut down. "It's not—it's not fake, it's just, we don't… in uniform, we're colleagues. That's… that's it."

"You sound pissed about it."

"I'm not pissed!" Okay. "I'm—that's just how it is, Crai—Endgame. That's just how it has to be."

"Okay. What'd Kyle mean when he said you were freezing?" I wondered.

Toolshed let out a huff of breath. "He meant exactly that. My skin's cold."

He held out his left arm to me, which was exposed from the sleeve of his shirt to the tip of his glove. Curious, I slid my right glove off and was about to feel for myself when I noticed something. Even through sunglasses. "You sweating something awful, dude, or what?"

Toolshed gave me an odd look. "Uh, no?"

"Yeah, you are. I'm not touching your arm."

"I swear, dude, I'm not sweating. I'd know."

"Well, look at your own damn arm."

Toolshed did, and stopped in his tracks. And recoiled.

Then, just as suddenly, he picked up his pace and I had to practically sprint to catch up with him.

"Toolshed!" I hollered.

"It's already starting," he shouted back. "Whatever _it_ is."

No, we both knew what _it_ was.

The Carnival. And whatever nightmarish tricks they'd throw at us to throw us off track.

The ground was now alarmingly solid. After all that rain, it should have been muddy at least, but for the most part we sprinted over nothing but the odd pine needle. I fell back and let Toolshed lead. He'd been at this longer than I had, and was pretty adept at knowing where the ground might be littered with traps.

Haze still hung in the air, and trees behind us dripped raindrops, but the air became both dense and dry as we approached the looming black gates. Toolshed slowed his pace and I followed suit, both of us halting at what looked like an elaborate wrought iron fence. It was maybe ten feet high; more ornate than the gate outside Token's parents' place, but something I felt okay enough calling 'of this earth.'

Toolshed was the first to step up to the gate. "Okay, guys," he said into the wire, "you still have audio?"

"Sure do," Delphi confirmed. "Talk us through your progress, guys, and we'll respond if we can."

"Let's hope it keeps up," added Red Serge.

"Right, then." Toolshed set a hand on the gate. "Here goes."

"Be careful." That was the Human Kite.

Toolshed braced himself and glanced up. "Looks like we've got security cameras," he noted. He was right. Like eyes peering down at us, affixed to the wrought iron.

Mysterion groaned. "Fuck. Shoulda figured."

"Do we care?" I asked, taking out the gun holstered at my right hip. I cocked it and aimed it upward.

"What?" asked Red Serge.

"I said, do we care? About their security cameras. Because there could very easily _not_ be cameras."

"Dude," Toolshed said, half warning but half obviously wishing he'd thought of that himself.

"Unless you wanna hack 'em," I said. "In which case, speak now."

"We are profoundly sorry, but this entrance is currently closed to the public," said a voice from the general direction of the camera. A speaker was positioned beside it. Goddammit, I couldn't notice too awful much in the pitch black upon pitch black in super dark sunglasses. I took a note. Maybe polarized ones would be better. Yeah… I'd get blue ones. With what fucking money I have no idea; the shoes had already been a huge investment.

"Gun down, Endgame," Mysterion advised. "Iron Maiden, hack in."

I relented, clicked the safety and tucked my gun back into its holster.

"We've got tickets and you know it," Toolshed spat up at the camera. "Either way, we're getting in."

"Not a single one of your tools can pick this lock, boy," the voice chided. Had to be Damien. "You think we wouldn't take that precaution?"

I looked the gate over, and found the lock Damien had mentioned. Maybe we couldn't pick it, and we certainly couldn't hack it—it was one of those rusty old things, hardly a pinnacle of modern technology—but we could get in.

"Timmah."

"What do you mean it's not working?" Red Serge complained through the airwaves.

"Guys, I got this," I said.

"No gunshots!" Mysterion barked at me.

"Relax."

I looked the lock over, then pushed Toolshed behind me and stood with my feet solid on the ground. With a deep breath in, I removed my sunglasses, aiming my gaze at the large iron lock that had been clipped through the spindly pegs of the large gate.

It didn't take a minute for the lock to melt and slide off.

I was expecting an alarm to go off, but it didn't. All I heard was Kite in my earpiece going, "Restraint, Endgame, damn."

"Look, we needed to get in, and these fucks weren't gonna budge otherwise," I said back, storming in past Toolshed. "If we're going into Hell, we should fucking charge it. Not sit around and play by its rules."

"Fine by me," I heard my current partner say under his breath.

Beyond the gates, it was hard to believe that we'd just been in a dense forest. Everything was—probably as I should have expected—dead and burned. For the first several feet we walked in, the only thing around us was black dust, glinting gold. In the distance, I could hear a rhythmic clash of metal. And the turning of enormous gears.

Everything inside the Carnival seemed to glow, too, which made me look around for lamps or other sources of light. Nothing, really. A few lanterns strung up in a web about fifty feet over our heads in some places, but for the most part, the primary source of light was obvious.

The volcano.

The very alive and angry volcano.

The entire Carnival had been chiseled into its rocky base, and high above us, at its peak, an iron stronghold was being erected. Toolshed noticed at the same time I did. "Think that's where they're set up?" I asked him. "Damien and Tenorman and little fucker whatshisface?"

"Disarray?"

"That guy, yeah."

"Nah." Toolshed shook his head. "It seems too obvious. They wouldn't set up in a place we'd notice right away."

"You think?"

"I know, man. They're gonna be at the center."

"Kay," I conceded. "That does make sense. So where's center?"

"Further in? I dunno, but I'm guessing—"

"What?"

He'd stopped mid-stride, and held me back.

His arm really did feel pretty fucking cold. But more like—I don't know, more like vapor than ice. Like the steam that rises off of swamps when the temperature drops. Don't ask me how I know that, it was humid in Peru and I saw a lot of vapor on marshes, okay?

But below us, I noticed when we stepped back, was a clear blue stream. It seemed to have come from nowhere, but when we looked back, I could see that it had been winding in from the entrance. Weird that I hadn't seen it before.

We looked back at the immediate part of the stream, one of us now standing on either side, and Toolshed nudged me to look up.

In the space of time between glancing back at the entrance and looking at the path, the world ahead became clearer, as if a curtain had been lifted on the full attractions of the Carnival. I could hear faint hurdy-gurdy music crackling through speakers I couldn't find. Several feet beyond where we stood, a ferris wheel rose up over tents and wooden roofs. The most brightly illuminated part of the Carnival was forward to my right, with an enormous neon sign glowing with the words, _RING-CATCH._ Red on white.

We followed the stream as it trickled closer toward the attractions, at which point it split in three directions, to the left, right and straight ahead. Straddling the three rivers was a stone ledge, where three small wooden boats were roped to a single iron pike sticking out of the top of the stone.

A mangled sign bore three names: _ACHERON,_ to the left, _LETHE,_ to the right, and the last I should've expected, _STYX._

Standing in one of the little vessels was a cloaked figure who hardly came up to my elbow in height.

"Well, well, hello, there," said the kid on the ferrey.

Disarray.

I didn't say anything back. He wanted to be freaking me out, but he wasn't. So he was back from the dead. Or still dead and still a little shithole, whatever. That wasn't my problem. My problem was that he'd fucked enough shit up for one lifetime. So he wasn't very impressive, as I'm sure he wanted to be. He was just irritating.

"Your pass?" He made a show of extending one hand.

I handed over my ticket, with the huge Roman numeral _I_ printed on the front.

"Ah," he said, studying the ticket. "Perfect. This is valid for one attraction only, as you must be aware." He stepped forward in the boat, and advised me, "Get on. Acheron waits."

Toolshed held up his ticket. "And this?" he wondered.

"Oh," Disarray laughed, "you'll be on your way soon. Now, as you know, this is your only guaranteed entrance. I advise that you step on now."

"Dude, be careful," Toolshed whispered at me.

"On it. You, too," I said, holding out one fist.

He crushed his knuckles against mine lightly, and, making a show to Disarray of the fact that I was damn well equipped to strike him down at any second, stepped onto the boat. It rocked somewhat with my movement, and then my cloaked ferryman cast off the boat's rope to send us floating down the river to the left.

"Acheron," I repeated, hoping Henrietta would hear me over the wire.

She did. "The river of woe," she returned. "One of the five rivers in Hell."

Trying not to make it obvious that I was having an outside conversation, I asked Disarray, "So there's three rivers here?"

"No," he said, "five."

"Five rivers," I reported back. "Got it. What're the other ones?"

"Lethe," Henrietta answered, "Styx, Phlegethon and Cocytus."

"I can't give too much away, now, can I?" said Disarray.

"Lethe is forgetfulness, Styx is hate, Cocytus is lamentation and Phlegethon is fire," Henrietta answered instead.

"I only saw three."

Disarray grabbed a pole from the bottom of the boat and pushed it into the river, speeding our transit. He scoffed and said, "Well if you make it to the end of your ride you just might see the others."

"What do you mean, make it?"

Looking ahead, I saw that the river was leading us straight toward a large building, a dome-like pyramid made of sheet metal. It looked like one of the structures I'd seen in Peru: huge, blocky Mayan steps reaching a rectangular peak about eighty feet up. The entrance was carved to look like the fanged mouth of some enormous beast.

The ferryman turned toward me without showing his face. "Welcome to the Hellmouth," he said, gesturing to the structure. "If you can't figure out how to escape, it will swallow you whole." He took up the pole and gave it one last shove, propelling my vessel into the structure. "Let the games begin."

And with that, he was gone. It was just me and this Hellmouth.

Once inside, I could hear faint music coming from a phantom source. It was nothing I recognized—I had kind of been expecting more Radiohead from Tenorman—but it sounded old. Skipping violin on a broken victrola old. It wasn't distracting, just sort of there. Violin in and out, crackling from a record player that should have stopped working years ago.

The boat floated slowly down the river; the water lapped lazily at the vessel's sides. It was a damn wide river, especially considering how small my boat was. It was meant to carry just one person, which already got me doubting this shit—wasn't Charon supposed to cart over dozens or, like, hundreds of people at once?

Oh, well. This wasn't actually Hell, at least not yet. This was just a ride.

I tried to get a good look around for the first ten or twenty minutes I was on the boat inside the Hellmouth, trying to recreate the look of the entrance in my head. I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a whale or a dragon or what, but as far as I knew this pyramid ride could actually be a fucking animal and I was just supposed to float along in here till I got digested.

But Disarray said there was an exit. I tried to look for that, but I couldn't see much other than water and walls.

I think it's almost needless to say that I am not an amusement park person. First of all, what's so fucking amusing about the rides and spending craptons of money on souvenirs you forget about a week later anyway? Secondly, as I've already noted, nothing much fazes or surprises me. I'm not impressed by lame-ass carnivals and their bowel-clogging snack cart offerings.

So I guess I was kind of… I dunno, pissed off that the motherfucking son of the devil couldn't surpass my expectations for shitty themed rides.

I stood on that damned tiny boat for another thirty minutes or so waiting for something to happen. It was a dark ride, yeah? An enclosed space which obviously had to have some sort of end to it, but the longer I stood on that slowly-moving boat, the longer I waited for some anamatronic monstrosity to shoot out at me or (again, figuring _Satan and Lianne Cartman's offspring_ could do better) poison missiles or some shit.

It wasn't lit very well either. The only faint light in the whole place seemed to be coming from the water itself. Just a red haze over the surface of the water.

Which… I think I'd seen before, right?

"Hey," I said into the wire, "what was the artwork with the red haze over the water?"

Static came back.

"Guys? Red Serge?" I asked. "Dude, aren't you connected?"

Again, static.

"Toolshed, can _you_ hear me?"

Zilch.

Okay, fuck. So I was on a ride going nowhere with no communication and no hints. What was the point?

There had to be an end to it.

I waited another fifteen minutes for something to happen before I got really Goddamn impatient, pulled out my .45 and shot a bullet into the blackness ahead of me, just to see if I could hear the shot hit the end of the cave wall. It hardly even echoed.

I tucked the gun away, not wanting to waste my bullets on what I was starting to fear was a bottomless pit. "A horizontal bottomless pit, Craig?" I mumbled to myself. "That's dumb."

Then again, maybe it wasn't too far-fetched. I guess I had just been expecting… I dunno, plagues? Some kind of torturous ride riddled with locusts swarming at me from all directions to wear me out?

This wasn't wearing me out, this was just _wasting my time._

Oh.

Oh, wait, fuck.

I was in Limbo.

_"FUCK!"_ I shouted, my voice stopping miles short of an echo. I felt like I'd walked into a trap. We all were. This was all just one giant trick to separate us and get us all out of the way by chucking us into 'rides' we couldn't get out of.

No… no, there had to be an exit. There had to be a way out. Another end of the river.

The bullet hadn't hit, but maybe a laser blast would. Desperate, I grabbed off my sunglasses for a good five seconds, shifting my gaze in two directions.

This time… this time, I thought I heard something. A rumbling, from off to my right. And only when I slid my sunglasses back on did I realize I was really in no position to investigate. Which, on my part, was really stupid.

I had been standing and ready for things to change from the ride's start, but this was fucking ridiculous. Nothing was changing. I started to doubt I was even moving. So, since clearly I needed a different approach to this damn ride, I sat in the shallow boat, legs out flat in front of me so that there was no chance of the hieroglyph touching the ground, and slowly removed my glasses.

The cavern came into slightly better focus as my eyes adjusted. I was already noticing things I'd been previously blinded to.

Huh.

Okay.

Maybe that was part of the point. I'd been super closed off, not wanting to get too far into any of this shit for years. Now that I'd chosen to really give it my all, this manifested limbo comes along and chucks me back to square one: stagnation.

Hell, to me, wasn't being in the thick of life-threatening missions. It was a life of constantly missing out.

And not even the major fights, too. I'd run from little things, thinking it was more than I could handle or less than I was worth.

I glimpsed a fork in the river up ahead. Fucking finally.

"Hey," I said. "If anyone can hear me, sorry for being an asshole."

No response.

I grit my teeth, and quickly shifted to kneeling. As the bank came closer, I unsheathed one sword and thrust out with my left hand. The blade stuck, and I steered my vessel off course.

The river's flow quickened, and I kept myself facing forward, one sword drawn, one hand free to grab my sunglasses in case I had to be quick on my feet.

The change in current was enough to convince me that I really had been stuck going around in circles for what very well could have been hours. At least a full hour as far as I'd been trying to count, but it was difficult to say.

Underneath me, I heard a harsh _thunk_ of something grabbing the bottom of my boat. I braced myself to be toppled, but the ride had locked my boat in place to ascend a cliff—waterfall?—just steep enough to keep me on guard but not to be thrown overboard. I was going up a level in the pyramid.

When my boat leveled out, I heard that rumbling again, closer this time. A crackle of static sounded in my ear… I might have been high enough now not to run into wavelength interference. "Guys?" I asked into the system. "Uh… Houston in the blind or whatever, can anyone give me any hints on this? I'm in a pyramid. I'm on a boat. On water. That shoulda been obvious, sorry. Anyway, I'm on a boat and I keep hearing this thing and I saw Disarray and he said something about Hellmouth and… I have no clue of you guys can hear me, but if you can, I dunno, pointers would be great. I'm in Limbo."

"….th?" came over the wire.

My boat floated along and the rumbling grew closer.

"Who is that?" I asked. "Gary?"

"-s. Yes." Why him? Oh, well, at least _some_one heard me. "Did you say _Hellmouth?"_

"I did."

"Okay. Um, you might… you might run into some opposition."

"Cool."

"How can you possibly say—"

"Anything's better than sitting on a fucking boat for another hour."

Gary did not respond, and for a few minutes I was afraid that the wire had cut out again. Of course, over the course of those few minutes, the rumbling grew closer. The current picked up once again and the water around me began to churn. Over the water, the hazy red light became brighter, allowing me to see more of my surroundings.

Not that there was much to see.

Just red, water, mist—a mechanical bank around me. Everything was made of iron plates, clearly a ride fashioned to look like something more menacing.

The sound I heard then, however, hardly sounded mechanized.

It was midway between a wail and a growl; a song and a warning.

Water lapped at the boat violently, as if the tide itself wanted to escape from whatever I was heading toward.

By the light of the thick red haze, I saw another opening ahead of me with jagged teeth leading into darkness.

"Is this seriously the end of the ride already?" I asked no one.

My answer came in the form of the teeth shooting down from above, swallowing up a wave of water and red light. The pressure threw my vessel backwards and I was more than capsized—thrown to the bank, really. I landed hard on my side and began to skid. I grabbed out both of my swords and jammed them into the ground so I'd stop before I fell off a cliff somewhere.

The sound came again and the ground shook.

As I righted myself, getting to my feet as best I could, I saw the thing the mouth belonged to. Or at least most of it.

I didn't know if it was a whale or a motherfucking dinosaur, but whatever the hell it was, the look that one if its golden eyes gave me stated pretty clearly that it wanted me dead.

– – –

– – –

**Authors' notes:**

_South Park_ is -c- Matt Stone & Trey Parker!

Sorry for the radio silence over the past several months (and for leaving off at a cliffhanger). It has been a tumultuous year. Thank you so much for reading and sticking with this story! There have been a few comments in my absence from this site, thank you all!

_Inferno_ will continue, though slowly. But for the next few chapters, each member of the League will get at least one chance to narrate.

Haha this site changed formats on me, I got so lost trying to upload this... ^^;

~Jizena & Rosie Denn

– – –


End file.
